


Duet

by snakemom



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Anxiety, Avenger Loki (Marvel), Avengers Family, Bisexual Female Character, Bisexual Loki (Marvel), Bonding, Coping, Depression, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Existentialism, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Musical References, Panic Attacks, Past Abuse, Post-Avengers (2012), Rambling, References to Norse Religion & Lore, References to Shakespeare, Slow Burn, Workplace Proximity Associates, m rating for language, mentions of past domestic abuse, nothing nsfw!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-02-13 16:15:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12987741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snakemom/pseuds/snakemom
Summary: Having been sentenced to an indefinite amount of time assisting the Avengers on Midgard for his recent antics--said ”recent antics” were technically “war crimes”, but whatever--Loki was less than pleased with his current situation. However, he was able to admit (begrudgingly, and only to himself) that this situation was far preferable to rotting away in a cell on Asgard. This was a truly sturdy foundation for your impending friendship: dealing with you was not quite as bad as being in prison.(or: Loki has to serve community service on Earth for his schenanigans, and reader is the poor unfortunate SHIELD Agent recruited to babysit him. Set after Avengers (2012).)





	1. Prologue: The Overture

**Author's Note:**

> pretty short first chapter, and i'm not 100% confident in it, so this fic will likely be one I edit and fix up a lot! I am really enjoying brainstorming for this, and if you have any suggestions I encourage you to speak up! I know vaguely where this is going and how it will be themed, but it is still very much a work in progress that I'm looking forward to taking in whatever direction it and your comments lead me. Critical comments especially are hella encouraged, cause I want to improve as a writer and find out what fits and what doesn't, as well as what is interesting to read and what is unnecessary.

Meeting the Avengers was one of the most dizzying experiences of your entire life, and the first thing you did with your free time was flop down onto your bed and take a long, well-deserved nap to try and process everything that had happened. 

Captain America, or, Steve, as he insisted you call him, was somehow even more charming in person than he had appeared on TV and in history class, and it was a little bit unreal to be breathing the same air as someone who had done so much to protect your planet. He had offered to carry your luggage for you when he had met you in the lobby, and you had assured him that you were perfectly capable of carrying it yourself (seeing as everything you had to your name fit with room to spare into one backpack and a suitcase), but he had countered with the statement that it was ‘the gentlemanly thing to do’, and even though it felt a little bit old-fashioned you had compromised and let him pull your suitcase because you’d be damned if he wasn’t the most genuine and well-intentioned man you had ever met in your life. The elevator ride was quiet, and a tad bit awkward, but you found that he was too nice to be actually intimidating despite his stature and superhuman abilities. You could sense his unease, however, and you realised that it was borne from his opposition to Loki’s residence in the tower. 

Captain America didn’t like bullies, after all.

You were a little relieved when the elevator ride was over, and the doors opened to reveal a room that seemed straight out of a science fiction movie. It was a recreation room, one of the Avengers’ common areas, which had completely blown your mind (mostly because it was The Avengers’ Common Area™, and the fact that you had common anything with actual superheroes was wild), where you had been introduced to Tony Stark. You somehow got the feeling that he was going to take the most warming up to out of all your new coworkers, but you shook his hand and grinned like an idiot anyway. 

“It was lovely to meet you, ma’am, but I have somewhere to be. Tony will show you around,” Steve handed you the suitcase and you thanked him with a smile. He returned it amiably and turned back toward the elevator.

“I can send someone to get the rest of your luggage, and then we can move you into your apartment,” Tony told you.

“That’s okay! I’ve got everything with me,” you gestured to the bags, and Tony raised his eyebrows.

“A minimalist,” he remarked.

“I guess,” you replied simply, not really caring to elaborate. He smiled.

“To each their own, I guess. Your room is down that hall, if you want to drop your stuff off so I can start the tour,” He jerked his thumb towards a door placed in the middle of the wall behind him.

“Sounds good,” you replied, staring towards it. He fell into step beside you and you swung the door open to reveal a hallway with two doors on opposite sides.

“The one on the right is yours. Most of the Avengers stay a floor up, but we put you and Reindeer Games on this level instead. Nothing personal. Well, not in your case, at least,” he said, his words dripping with distaste for your new partner. You held up your keycard to the sensor on the door. “I didn’t even want the bastard here in the first place-”

“Oh really? Why in the world not?” you quipped sarcastically as the door clicked open, and your face grew hot as you realised how rude that had probably come across. Tony chuckled and clapped you on the back, and despite your aversion to the unexpected contact you felt a little more at ease with him as the two of you entered the apartment. It was spacious enough, with a closet, a dresser, a desk, and a swivel chair as well as a door that appeared to lead to a private bathroom.

“It was Thor’s dad’s idea to let him stick around. Community service, or whatever. Fury was all for it, but the team and I would have fought it a hell of a lot more if he hadn’t sent you here to keep the creep in line,” he glanced at you apologetically. “It’s going to be on the down-low, but you’ll be on full time babysitting duty here. Sorry, kiddo,”

“I mean, it was me who took the job, so there’s nothing for you to be sorry for,” you chose to ignore the nickname, placing your bookbag on the queen sized bed and setting the suitcase at the foot.

He shot you a puzzled glance, and you returned it steadily. You had no problem working with Loki, and you weren’t really afraid of him aside from your regular anxieties regarding others. You were trained specifically for dealing with individuals like him, and you were intending to go into the assignment with as little bias as possible, so you had done your best to keep from resenting the Asgardian for his attack on your world and didn’t have many reservations in that area either. “You can handle, this, right? I’m not saying I don’t trust Fury’s judgement, but...well, this is one hell of an assignment. Nobody would blame you if you weren’t up for it,”

You smiled at him. It was unclear how much the others knew about your history, or your powers, and you preferred it that way. “I’m tougher than I look,” you assured him, satisfied that your answer would most likely deflect any interest in your abilities without being rude. He chuckled dryly.

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” he said, and when he looked at you, you saw the serious edge his expression held. He looked worried, and you couldn’t blame him for being worried about letting such a suspicious character into his home. Hell, not just into his home, but his life, his career, his livelihood. All of those things were placed in real jeopardy with Loki in the tower, and you straightened your spine and fixed him the most confident and sincere stare you could manage.

“He won’t cause any harm with me around. I promise, Mr. Stark,”

He smiled again, but there was no humor in it. “Good,”

“I’m all settled here, so, tour?” you asked, the air of seriousness thankfully broken as he waved you out the door and back to the common area. 

What followed was a long day of introductions to people you recognised from the news, directions that you knew you’d forget, and being amazed by the advanced technology all around you. You did your best not to be bothered by the way some of your new coworkers seemed to regard you--with veiled suspicion and uneasiness by association--considering the fact that they despised Loki and knew very little about you or your powers. They were all kind, and welcomed you to the tower, but you could feel that they were unsure about your presence. 

Agent Romanoff kept an eye on you whenever the two of you were in the same room, and it was unnerving to say the least. THERE was someone you were properly afraid of, and for good reason, since she probably knew a dozen different ways to kill you with only her bare hands. Her presence certainly did not help your anxiety, which seemed to spike every time she was close. Agent Barton was especially uncomfortable around you, and you made the encounter you had with him as brief as you possibly could out of courtesy. You found that your favorite of the team members was Doctor Banner, who didn’t seem as put off by your new occupation. He was intelligent and good-natured, and you found yourself looking forward to working with him especially. 

The day was swept by in a whirl of nervous excitement, and in the blink of an eye you found yourself staring at the ceiling in the darkness of your room, the gears of your mind whirring incessantly and refusing to let you sleep. It was as though the day had just happened without your acknowledgement, and you had just floated around unthinking and unfeeling and just allowing it to pull you along. You had felt this way for far too long, you thought, and in that moment you started to worry that maybe you weren’t alive anymore. Not really, at least. You weren’t living so much as life was happening to you.

Now, your mind was racing out of control to cling to the reality of it all, to absorb and comprehend all of the new and overwhelming information, your dark circles intensifying as you blinked up into the blackness and dealt with the whiplash of being abruptly self-aware. Your heart thudded in your ears, setting the beat of the song that had been flitting around in your head all day, and your eyes fluttered closed with a sigh. The tune was what finally, after hours of burning red eyes and emotional exhaustion, slipped you into a restless sleep.

Loki was scheduled to arrive in three days, and god knows that you would need to be well-rested in preparation for that.


	2. Enter Stage Left

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki arrives and, because of who he is as a person, makes a horrible first impression.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is a little slow, sorry! it's necessary though, i promise. also, writing loki's dialogue is crazy fun. all you have to do to write him well is ask yourself: "if someone wrote this as a facebook post, would it end up on r/iamverysmart?" if the answer is yes, congratulations, you've got some realistic af loki dialogue.

It was with a sort of bitter resignation that Loki Laufeyson stepped into Stark Tower and, simultaneously, your life. This would prove to be the worst and also maybe the best thing that had ever happened to the both of you. He entered the tower with plans to purge his stay here from his memory entirely the instant it was over, to bury it in some dismal and distant corner of his mind and resume his life as though it and the events leading up to it had never occurred in the first place; this was perhaps not a stellar beginning to your story, but in all honesty you had been expecting no less of him.

He had been sentenced to an indefinite amount of time assisting the Avengers on Midgard for his recent antics--said ”recent antics” were technically “war crimes”, but whatever--and he was less than pleased with his father’s decision, but he was able to admit (begrudgingly, and only to himself) that this situation was far preferable to rotting away in a cell on Asgard. This was another truly sturdy foundation for your friendship: dealing with you was not quite as bad as being in prison. 

He was lost in his own mind throughout the entire elevator ride, dimly aware of the low rumble of Thor’s voice but focused only on his own churning thoughts, and he was startled slightly as the elevator came to a halt with a ding. Thor seemed to be finishing a lecture, but Loki’s attention had only settled on him for the last sentence, which was a warning, hissed lowly through Thor’s teeth.

“--and by the gods, Loki, please try to be polite, for your own sake.”

Loki rolled his eyes subtly at his brother’s warning as the elevator doors slid open. His gaze swept around the room lazily, observing what appeared to be a bar, a few couches, a television, and a closed door on one wall. Huge windows were behind the couches, providing a stunning view of the city. This view was partially obscured at the moment by several disgruntled members of the Avengers team, crowded on the couches, all of whom were presently looking intensely uncomfortable. He recognized the Widow, the Captain, the archer, Stark, and, with a repressed wince, Doctor Banner. None of them looked all too pleased with his presence, Rogers, Barton, and Banner avoiding his gaze while the Widow and Stark opted for glaring daggers into him instead. There was only one Midgardian there who he could not seem to place. She was a young woman, relatively short in stature--but what Midgardian wasn’t, compared to the lineup of perfect human specimen that were the Avengers--and she was eyeing him with nothing but interest gleaming in her (e/c) eyes. She sat cross-legged on the couch beside Banner, forearms resting on her thighs and a pen twirling absent-mindedly between her fingers, and he noted that she appeared to be neither afraid of him nor upset by his presence, which was entirely foolish of her in his opinion. 

Thor pulled him from his thoughts after what was realistically only a few awkward seconds of silent observation, but had seemed like an eternity to the trickster, who noted that fact with a small amused twitch of his mouth. Even for a being as old as he, times of discomfort barely significant in comparison to his lengthy life seemed to stretch on forever. “Loki, you remember the team. Team, I’m sure that you all remember my brother,” Thor rumbled uneasily. Loki confirmed with a stiff nod. 

“Vaguely,” Tony scoffed. The unfamiliar young woman had gotten to her feet and was making her way towards the two gods.

Ignoring Tony’s quip, Thor gestured to the woman. “Loki, this is Lady (y/n),” he stated, looking at Loki expectantly. Loki looked the young Midgardian woman, who now stood in front of him, up and down incredulously. She was short compared to both of the gods, and she had to crane her neck slightly just to look either of them in the eye. Her hair was pinned up and away from her face, and her clothing was clearly what Midgardians would consider “casual”: a pen tucked behind her ear, a shirt that was clearly from the Avengers Tower Gift Shop, denim jeans, a pair of worn lace-up shoes, and what appeared to be mismatched socks. One hand was settled on her hip and the other had been extended toward him in greeting. He eyed it distastefully. She did not look exceptionally strong or capable, and the god flicked his gaze back to his brother, an eyebrow raised.

“And?”

Thor responded with a frustrated puff of air. “You don’t listen to a word I say, do you?” he mumbled, more to himself than to his brother. The others realised quickly that this conversation did not require their presence, and with the mandatory introduction over, the most powerful individuals on Midgard immediately scattered like ants to exit the room. “Lady (y/n) will be your partner and supervisor during your stay here. I have matters to attend to back on Asgard, and I hope that I cause no offence by implying that you are not trustworthy, but I have enlisted her help in keeping you in line.” 

Loki scoffed at this, his voice dropping to a loud whisper that did nothing to keep his voice from reaching her ears. “Her? Not the assassin, or the green man? Have you thought this through, brother?” he asked, amusement clear in his tone.

“Right here,” she stated under her breath, dropping her hand to her side with an air of annoyance. He payed her no heed. Banner, who was passing with the Widow at his side, paused to give (y/n) a reassuring pat on the arm. She jumped slightly at the contact, but seemed to relax when she saw that it had been Banner. The Black Widow fixed her gaze on Loki for a moment with such intensity and purpose that an unexpected chill slipped down his spine, then followed behind Clint and Banner swiftly.

“What part of her is so exceptional that you deemed her capable of this?” Loki inquired with an amused quirk of his lips. Thor’s patience seemed to be wearing thin already, and Loki felt a small twinge of pride at that. He would do as he was told in this case, and serve his time in this wretched realm, but it was still in his nature to antagonize and he fully intended to act in accordance with his nature as often as he could without jeopardizing the relative freedom he had been granted. The Captain didn’t even spare Loki a glance as he followed the other team members, and in only a short time all but (y/n), the Asgardians, and an impatient Tony Stark had crowded into the elevator and disappeared from sight.

“Probably the part of me that is a former SHIELD agent who was recruited to the Avengers after the Battle of New York,” she said dryly, clearly having practiced some sort of introduction that the two gods were not pausing to allow her to recite as they continued to argue and paid her no mind. She was pretty soft spoken, but Loki could hear her perfectly fine. He was just choosing to ignore her.

“If you had listened to me for once, you would know all of this already,” Thor grumbled. “It was my opinion that the Widow would have been more capable, but Stark insisted that Lady (y/n) should be the one to take this job.”

“Still right here. Fully within earshot of this conversation,” she chimed in once more. “And I honestly was the best fit for this, especially considering the fact that I was the only one they could find who would agree to put up with you full time,” she stated, seeming somewhat pleased with herself as Loki turned his irritated gaze back to her face.

“What does she do? What sort of power does she wield?” He asked Thor with his eyes still on her, pointedly choosing to ignore her snide remark. 

“She was a SHIELD agent,” Thor responded. “And she is simply a talented mortal. She has no powers to speak of.” The god of thunder seemed to be growing more and more unsure of Stark’s decision with each word that he spoke, much to Loki’s amusement.

“I am perfectly capable of dealing with an ill-tempered god, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she spoke up this time, her voice clear, bright, articulate. It was an unusually pleasant sound, and her tone held something that made Thor and Loki’s eyes snap to hers, the latter’s plans to antagonise Thor almost forgotten.

Loki narrowed his eyes with intensifying curiosity. He sensed that she was wary, but not afraid, which was interesting to him considering the fact that she was toe to toe with a god, and a war criminal at that. The tension was palpable as they stared each other down with unspoken threats in their eyes, neither willing to yield.

Thor broke the silence by clearing his throat uncomfortably. “Now that that is out of the way, I really must go. Stark wishes to speak with me about the particulars of your employment, so I will return in a few hours to see how you are settling in,” he stated, heading swiftly toward the elevator with Stark behind him. He waved over his shoulder as he entered, calling back to her. “Good luck, Lady (y/n)!”

The woman watched them go with tired annoyance, then turned back to Loki. “We can try this again, if you’d like. My name is Agent (f/n) Hamilton,” she said, extending her hand firmly. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Charmed,” he deadpanned, once more making no move to shake. She dropped her hand to her side, not seeming all too bothered by his stubbornly persistent callous attitude.

“Thor briefed us on your situation before you arrived, and asked me if I could show you around and keep an eye on you while he’s gone,” She explained, and he scoffed, clearly offended by the very implication that she would be able to keep him from doing whatever he pleased during his stay.

“I wish you luck in that endeavor, mortal, but I somehow doubt that we are evenly matched.”

She shrugged, a secretive smile tugging at the corners of her lips and an amused glint sparkling in her eyes. “Even so, I doubt that it’ll come to a ‘match’. You most likely won’t cause too many problems, unless I’ve got the wrong impression and you want to stick around here. From what I’ve heard, your best shot at getting out of this tower is if they cut your sentence short for good behavior,” she replied.

He glared at her, face growing hot with poorly masked indignance. “In that case, you surely will not misread my compliance as recognition of your superiority,” he snapped.

“Whatever you say, dude,” she replied with a shrug. “Anyway. This is one of the common rooms. It’s a rec room sort of, there’s a TV with a few video games, a bar, and some board games stashed on the shelf over there. ‘Team building’, bonding, and what-have-you. There’s a gym and training area three levels up, the food area is two levels up, and the level right above us is all Avengers’ apartments,” you said. “From what I understand, you’re pretty much confined to the gym, rec room, and food area unless you have an escort.”

He scoffed at that, and you raised your eyebrows, but said nothing. “And where will I reside?”

“Well, most of the other guys didn’t want you on the same floor where they sleep, but they also didn’t want you to be left unattended, so you’re on this floor with me,” she said. 

Loki was feeling increasingly disrespected, and he bristled at that. 

“You have your own room and all, but it’s just a door away from mine,” she reassured him. “You’re through that door and to the left,” you pointed to the door, and he started toward it immediately. “If you need anything, let me-” the door clicked behind him. “know,” her last word was muffled by the door, and he rolled his eyes and relaxed his shoulders, relishing in the feeling of finally being left alone as he entered his new apartment. He was completely self-sufficient, and intelligent enough to figure out the workings of this primitive Midgardian structure himself. He considered her naive, and scoffed once more at the notion that the little Midgardian woman was the one who had been enlisted to keep him in line. What was it Thor had called her? Talented?

“Doubtful,” Loki muttered to himself.

* * *

The woman disturbed him once more at the bright and early time of seven thirty the next morning, and he opened the door to ask what in the world she wanted at such an ungodly hour.

“Breakfast,” she told him.

“Absolutely not,” he replied without hesitation, moving to close the door in her face. He hadn’t slept, which was not abnormal for him, but he was tired, stressed, and not keen on being in a room full of equally irritable Avengers first thing in the morning. She placed her palm firmly against the door with strength that took Loki only slightly by surprise, and he eased his grip on the handle.

“Absolutely yes,” she replied, and he frowned at her awkward phrasing. “It’s a team thing. If you’re here, you’ve got to go to breakfast,” she cocked her head. “Also, wait, ‘ungodly hour’? Do you call everything that inconveniences you ungodly? I mean, it’s technically true, since you’re a god and all, but it’s a bit pretentious.”

“The word ‘pretentious’ implies that my intent was to impress,” he replied, voice a bored drawl. She squinted at him, searching for any sign of sarcasm, then let out a slow puff of air.

“Good lord, you aren’t even joking,” she muttered. “Listen, bud. You’re going to breakfast if I have to drag you there myself,” she said clearly, sparking a brief but intense impromptu staring contest. He grinned broadly, amused, but not friendly, and she blinked at him in surprise.

“Go on, then,” he leaned against the doorframe leisurely, arms crossed. “I’d like to see you try.”

She snorted. “It’s not clever to pretend you didn’t know I was exaggerating. It just makes you look ridiculous,” she said. “Besides, I figured you wouldn’t want to deal with the embarrassment of being dragged to breakfast by a mortal half your height, but if you were really set on it, I’ll give it a go.”

He raised his eyebrows at that. “Why do you insist upon making so many promises you cannot keep?” he asked, amused. She looked at him in disbelief, then groaned and rubbed her eyes with a yawn.

“It’s too early for me to like, properly argue with someone as astoundingly hypocritical as you,” she grumbled through her hands. “Besides, I haven’t had a conversation this long in weeks and it’s giving me a fuckin’ headache,” she yawned again, dragging her hands down her face and shaking her head as though she was trying to dislodge something before looking him in the eyes again and evening out her voice. “Come to breakfast. I’m done asking you.”

She must have made some effective points, because Loki found himself huddled over a bowl of fruit at the Avengers’ breakfast bar in a matter of ten minutes. She had seated herself as far from him as she could, and he would have been lying if he had said that had been disappointing. 

The next week was monotonous: the Midgardian waking him up to argue, awkward breakfasts surrounded by infuriatingly dull small talk, training, lunch with more small talk, chores, dinner (accompanied by somehow even more small talk), and then relative freedom. He saw very little of the woman, and didn’t think much of that. She rarely spoke, aside from her nagging, and, like him, spent all of her free time holed up in her room. 

With such a dull and uneventful beginning to his stay, he mused to himself that the rest of his time here would be similarly unremarkable. In hindsight, this was an incredibly foolish assumption. The nature of his stay would be anything but unremarkable, and it all began to change with a particularly odd Midgardian holiday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this will be filled with little nods to theatre btw. it's also got some pretty heavy Steven Universe influences, but obviously with my own take. Loki and Peridot are two of my favorite angry, condescending green aliens.


	3. Ensemble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanksgiving brings around a nasty snowstorm, and an unfortunate turn of events leaves some very unhappy Avengers stranded in the dining room for the duration of the holiday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a big ol mess but I wanted to write some bonding and character development! also i'm a bit sick and woozy as a result so if this is nonsense i am very sorry. anyway i hope u enjoy!

The snow came one brisk November morning with a vengeance, much to everyone’s dismay. Well, mostly everyone. Loki didn’t mind. For obvious reasons, he enjoyed the cold, and on top of that, the American celebration of “Thanksgiving” meant that several team members were absent from the Tower to visit family and leaving the rooms blissfully quiet. Thor had departed, as had Banner and the Captain, and Loki was looking forward to the point at which Barton and the Widow would follow through with their plans to abscond as well. Despite the fact that the insufferable Stark would be the only remaining Midgardian, he had decided that it was best to take the advice of the Midgardian holiday and be thankful for what he had (namely, solitude).

It was four-thirty in the afternoon as he sat in the dining room, food forgotten as he flicked through a fictional Midgardian novel and waited for Barton and the Widow to cease their post-mission chatter and depart already. The mission had already taken longer than anyone had expected and he did not understand why Stark insisted upon dragging such things as battle out even more with the endless paperwork he required. Apparently, it was a legal responsibility, which made even less sense to Loki. Why were the most powerful beings on this tiny planet forced to answer to a government less powerful than them? It was ludicrous.

The elevator doors slid open and Loki’s gaze flicked from the book to an exhausted-looking (y/n), who was stepping into the dining room. She didn’t even spare the others a glance as she made her way swiftly to the sink, her hair stuck to her face in places, a loose hoodie with missing strings draped over her form, and her breath coming sharply as she turned the tap on and filled her water bottle before taking a long drink. She had clearly been training, which surprised the god, considering the fact that he hadn’t seen her once all day. He had assumed that she had gone to see her family, as all the others had.

Stark looked up from the forms he was filling out and smiled at her in greeting, but she took no notice, and Loki sensed from her flushed cheeks and the way she was avoiding eye contact like the plague that she was somewhat embarrassed, but he couldn’t tell why. She grabbed a cup of fruit from the refrigerator and seated herself on the opposite end of the breakfast bar from the Avengers, which happened to be right across from Loki, who was now glaring daggers at her for being so rude as to sit near him. She didn’t meet his gaze, or even seem to notice his eyes on her; as he began to entertain the idea of ordering her to move, the lights in the room cut out with a low hum, leaving the five team members in darkness.

It wasn’t quite a pitch black, having been eased only slightly by what little light was able to pierce through the blizzard and into the windows, but it was clearly alarming to Stark, who was looking around with a tense disbelief on his face. The refrigerator light flickered off as well, and Loki sensed immediately that the temperature in the room was on a gradual decline. Stark swore loudly, a hint of panic in his voice as he stalked to the emergency exit door, shoving against it uselessly for a moment before pounding a closed fist on it in frustration. (y/n) flinched.

“Fucking safety precautions,” Stark growled lowly.

“Tony?” Barton called, voice wavering only slightly to betray his worry.

“The power’s out. The connection must have been cut off somehow,” Tony paced toward the window anxiously, noting the lights of the still-bustling city. “We’ve got our own energy source, so we’re the only ones down.”

“How do we get it back?” Barton rose to his feet, the stool scraping against the floor in his haste. 

“We don’t,” Stark replied, frustration practically oozing from his every pore. “Not from here. SHIELD will be on it right away--well, they’d BETTER be on it right away, dammit, or I swear to god, heads will roll--but there’s nothing we can do. I programmed JARVIS to put whatever room our resident supervillian is in on lockdown in the event of a power outage,” he rubbed his hands over his face.

“How long will it take them?”

Tony massaged his temples. “Depends on the problem. Could take an upwards of twelve hours to figure this out.”

“Twelve hours?” Barton was angry now, and Loki, growing more amused by the second, turned the page in the novel without reading a word, his face a flawless portrait of apathy as he listened to their every word, basking in the chaos around him. “I was supposed to be out of here in thirty minutes. There’s no way in hell that I’m giving up a nice Thanksgiving dinner to be stuck here with Loki, of all people!”

The Widow cut in, voice low. “There must be some way for you to override the lockdown.”

“The system is down. There’s nothing for me to override.”

She was on her feet now, making her way to the door to rattle at the handle.

“It’s made to contain an Asgardian at full strength, but please, be my guest,” Tony said dryly as Romanov kicked and cursed in vain at the uncaring door. 

“What about you? Can’t you magic us out of this or something?” Barton shot his words at Loki with the same fierce accuracy he possessed as a marksman. 

“You know, I bet he magiced us into this in the first place. This just reeks of his meddling,” Romanov spat. 

Not even bothering to look up, Loki responded coolly. “My magic has been limited to simple parlor tricks for the safety of you laughably breakable creatures.”

“Magic or not, it’s his fucking fault that Tony had to install the lockdown protocol in the first place,” she retorted.

He could feel Barton’s cutting glare as his voice rose. “Fantastic. So thoughtful of your folks to remove the only thing you’re good for before they made you our problem instead.”

Loki’s cold eyes snapped up to stare Barton down. “Underestimating my abilities, magical or otherwise, is a dangerous mistake.”

Romanov advanced now, leaning menacingly against the breakfast bar beside her partner. “Is that a threat, pal?” she asked, and he foolishly ignored the warning that flashed in her eyes.

“No,” he met her gaze with a calm appearance that did not reflect his fear and therefore begrudging respect for her. His words were sharp and he spoke swiftly. “Simply a piece of good advice.”

“Unbelievable!” Stark cried from the other side of the room, pausing his pacing to advance toward the god, an accusatory finger jabbing at him. “You just don’t know when to-”

“Shut up already!”

All eyes turned slowly toward the source of the loud, desperate call. (y/n)’s fingernails were scrabbling at her upper arms in a protective hug, shoulders heaving with short, hasty breaths, her brows furrowed together and sharp, anxious gaze flicking from person to person as they stared at her, silenced by their surprise at her outburst. In an instant, the fear and anger burning in her features was washed away by shame and guilt, and she dropped her glassy eyes to the table in front of her. “Never mind, I shouldn’t have, I-”

“No,” Clint seemed to relax, sinking tiredly into his seat. “You’re right. Yelling about this isn’t gonna open those doors.”

Loki continued to stare at the young woman, transfixed, something akin to wonder blooming in his chest. Her face was softer now in the uncomfortable silence, sad, ashamed, looking as though she wanted to collapse in on herself, yet he was somehow both intrigued and humbled by the fire that had burned in its place only seconds earlier. Surprisingly, he found himself feeling...bad. Guilty, even. She had been so distressed, and it still showed in the way she worried her lower lip.

“Sorry, kid,” Tony said, seeming almost embarrassed. She smiled a bit.

“Nah, it’s not your fault. I can get a bit...skittish. No need to apologize.” she confessed with a hasty shrug, avoiding their eyes.

“No need to apologize? Nice try, Hamilton, but Tony always has something to be apologizing for,” Romanov said, and when Loki looked at her, he found a fond sort of annoyance in her eyes as she sent a pointed glare to Stark. He chuckled in reply, and (y/n) smiled a loose, relieved grin that shone in her (e/c) eyes. Loki felt himself relax a bit.

(y/n)’s gaze was on Barton now, who was picking absent-mindedly at his fingers and avoiding any eye contact. She visibly hesitated, then rose to her feet and leaned over to place a tentative hand on both of his. “I’m sorry you’ll miss Thanksgiving,” she said, voice a low, pleasant hum. He tilted his head and met her gaze steadily, confused. They remained like that for a moment, then shared a smile. The instant Barton visibly relaxed, (y/n) withdrew her hand and returned to her seat. 

“What about you, (y/n)?” Tony asked. “Didn’t you have plans to head home for the holidays?”

She seemed lost in thought, and his voice snapped her back out with a start. “Oh. Thanksgiving, right. Nah, I was planning staying here,” she replied simply.

“I could’ve asked Goldilocks to bring his brother home for a bit, if that’s what you were worried about.”

Loki’s gaze shifted immediately to Stark, preparing to argue his way out of this new, terrible plan, but (y/n) spoke before he got the chance. “I wasn’t worried,” she said evenly. “I just don’t want to go home,” she said this with no real conflict in her voice, and Loki looked at her again, puzzled.

“Not close with your folks?”

“You could say that,” she said, her voice once more betraying nothing, but a small, bitter smile twitching at the corners of her mouth.

“Surprisingly, neither am I, these days,” Stark said, sarcasm laced into his tone. Romanov smacked him lightly on the arm as if scandalised by the carelessness with which he joked about such a serious matter. “My idea of Thanksgiving tradition is ordering takeout and sitting through the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving rerun on ABC Family.”

She perked up slightly at that. “They still show that?”

“Every year. You can join me, if those assholes can figure out how to get the power back on this month. Pigpen is invited too if he can promise to behave.”

She looked at Loki for the first time that evening, tilting her head thoughtfully with a smile. “I know that you were trying to be rude, but he’s more of a Lucy.”

Loki didn’t know whether to be insulted or grateful, and instead lowered his gaze back to the book at the sound of Stark’s laughter. “I have no interest in your ridiculous culture or any of its practices,” he said icily.

“I think you’re just bitter ‘cause we don’t celebrate the Norse holidays anymore,” Tony quipped, and (y/n) snorted, drawing two surprised sets of eyes to her. She looked up, eyes darting between the two men, and then hesitantly provided an explanation.

“It’s just that we totally do celebrate them. We just call them different things now,” she explained. “People think that the spread of Christianity squashed out the pagan religions in Europe, but it really just absorbed them. We celebrate ‘Jesus’s Birthday’-” she rolled her eyes and twitched her fingers in dramatic air quotes, “-in December, but historically, he was probably born in the spring. The priests just had to slap a Christian label on the old Pagan yuletide traditions because people wouldn’t stop celebrating them,” she seemed to realize that she was starting to ramble and dropped her gaze back to her fruit. Everyone was looking at her then, Loki included, interest gleaming in his blue eyes. She laughed softly, and it was a bright and pleasant sound even with the nervous undertones. “Santa Claus is even based on Odin,” she said, stirring at the fruit cup with a lopsided smile. Tony let out a sharp bark of laughter at that.

“Santa Claus is real after all,” Barton added thoughtfully, and Romanov’s mouth twitched with amusement.

“So that’s what’s rolling around in that head of yours when you get all quiet. Obscure historical facts. I’ll be damned,” Tony said, and, blushing with something like relief and sheepishness, she grinned. A real, honest-to-god grin, from ear to ear. 

It suited her.

“You know,” Romanov spoke this time, and her statement was a surprising one. “It’s still Thanksgiving, and we’ve got some time to kill. We could throw together our own dinner if we tried.”

Tony perked up at that idea, and Loki watched with a sort of disdainful fascination as the humans set to work raiding the cupboards for any food that didn’t require cooking. In a matter of minutes, the remarkable result was laid out before him: several half-eaten bags of chips, some hummus, two everything bagels, a jar of dill pickles, a bag of baby carrots, and a plate of dried cranberries Barton had painstakingly picked from a bag of trail mix. “You can’t have a Thanksgiving dinner without cranberries,” he had insisted, and Romanov had made the excellent point that you couldn’t have one without turkey, either, which he had countered with an eloquent “Fuck off, Nat.”

(y/n) dumped a few pieces of fresh fruit into the center of the table, looking pleased with herself as she stood back to admire their teamwork. “It’s a mess,” she observed, not unhappily.

“It’s better than nothing, though,” Barton said, somewhat cheerey.

“Is it really?” Loki asked, and he earned a chuckle from Stark.

“Whatever it is, it’ll have to do.”

Loki found himself, much to his dismay, enjoying this time he was spending with the humans. Their misplaced optimism and affinity for traditions was almost endearing, and he wrinkled his nose at the thought. As with most meals, there was the dreaded small talk, but somehow, he hated it a little less this time, and even joined in a little.

The sun had vanished completely by the time they had finished eating, and the only source of light source was the bright glow from the buildings outside. Stark rubbed at his arms absently. “Motherfucker. No power means no heat.”

(y/n)’s hopeful gaze flicked to Loki, and she offered him the ghost of a smile. “Parlor tricks wouldn’t happen to include pulling blankets from thin air, would it?”

He pressed his mouth into a thin line and set his novel down. “Not from thin air. It may be magic, but the law of conservation of matter still applies.”

She raised her eyebrows. “How about summoning blankets from elsewhere, then?”

He replied with an almost dismissive wave of his hand, and a pile of blankets appeared on the breakfast bar with an abruptness that startled everyone but him. 

“Thank you,” she said, looking almost touched.

His face remained impassive. “I imagine that Thor would not be overly pleased to return and find that I’d allowed the lot of you to freeze to death,” he said. “You are, as I said earlier, laughably breakable.”

Tony reached for a blanket, smirking. “I was starting to tolerate you for a second there, Lucy. Don't ruin it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if anyone was wondering, I figured that Cap would be off visiting Peggy on Thanksgiving.


	4. A Gray Flag

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone lets their guard down in a haze of exhaustion, and the two book nerds get to have some awkward bonding time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk i just took the shakespeare stuff and went with it. lots of references to romeo and juliet and also a midsummer night's dream. mostly just me rambling, but isn't every chapter just me rambling? also the first four chapters have been silliness and setup, but the next few are going to be just as silly but with a bit more serious plotty stuff, so watch out for that!
> 
> OH ALSO i got a tumblr (snake-mom) and you can find aesthetic and playlist tags there for all of my fics. here's the tags for this fic:
> 
> playlist tag: https://snake-mom.tumblr.com/tagged/playlist%3A-duet
> 
> aesthetic tag: https://snake-mom.tumblr.com/tagged/aesthetic%3A-duet

The power hummed softly back to life at five-thirty in the morning, all of the lights easing back on, and Loki was immensely surprised to find himself waking up. He hadn’t intended to fall asleep in the first place, but there he was, seated on one of the couches in the dining room, an unpleasant crick in his neck from having been leaned awkwardly against the back of the couch. He mumbled his displeasure, rolling his head to relieve the slight pinch, and saw the Widow stirring from her place on the floor, bleary-eyed, a comforter falling from her shoulders as she gracefully extended her limbs in a catlike stretch. The archer was a lump of blanket at her side. She didn’t look so threatening now, all sleepy blinks and mussed hair, and she seemed even less frightening when she placed her hand gently on the still-sleeping Barton’s shoulder and shook him carefully awake. He grumbled something at her that Loki couldn’t quite hear and a delicate smile curved her lips. 

Tony had apparently already been up, as he was leaning against the breakfast bar and picking over some dry cereal. He let out a whoop when the power came on, picking up the bowl and making his way over to the others with a slight swagger. “Rise and shine, team!” he said, obnoxiously loud, and Loki pinched the bridge of his nose with a groan as a sharp pain pierced at his head. Barton shifted in his blankets. “Sleep well?”

“It isn’t rise and shine if the sun is still down. Just rise,” Barton protested lamely.

Stark, Barton, and Romanov were all accounted for, so where was…

His question was answered as his gaze fell on the other half of the couch. (y/n) was curled neatly on her side of the couch, leaving a foot or so of distance between them, his book open to about the halfway mark on her lap. She had her hand resting on the page and was looking with a kind of tired amusement at the Widow. He raised an eyebrow.

“Have you enjoyed my novel?”

She jumped, looking at him, her wide, surprised eyes lined with dark bags. She clearly hadn’t slept. He noticed in this moment that the distinct color of her (e/c) irises, which were usually careful, guarded, had almost brightened with a carefree sort of exhaustion. “Huh?” she said, voice raspy from disuse. He glanced pointedly at the book in her lap. She cleared her throat sheepishly. “Oh. Sorry, I saved your place and stuff, you can have it back!” she snapped it shut and shoved it toward him with slightly shaky hands, perhaps jittery from lack of sleep. He waved his hand, indifferent and dismissive.

“Finish it, if you’d like. There are plenty of Midgardian novels. It makes no difference to me which one I read.”

“I was wondering why you picked up _Romeo and Juliet_. It doesn’t seem like the sort of book I’d expect someone like you to read,” She placed it in the space between them, and before he got the chance to ask her what she meant by ‘someone like you’ (she had said it as though it made perfect sense, and he was unsure whether or not to be offended), she spoke again. “I really like it, though. It’s a classic!”

“A classic? This?” he wrinkled his nose, glancing down at the novel. “I suppose I understand why. Your culture is incredibly partial to romance, and the absurd behavior of these characters does seem to be in line with typical mortal logic.”

She surprised him with a loud, ringing laugh. “Have you finished it?” she asked. He shook his head, and she grinned. “It’s not a romance. A lot of people think it is, but it’s more of a cautionary tale about unnecessary conflict and tragedy. Like, you’re totally right. The main characters do act absurd, but that doesn’t mean that,” she paused, as if searching for the right word. “I guess you can’t assume that the reader is supposed to be supporting the main characters all the time. I always thought it was kind of a weird mix between dramatic social commentary and funny satire. I mean, for fuck’s sake, it opens with a dick joke and ends with...well. You’ll see. Just finish it,” she pushed it insistently toward him, blushing as she realised she had been rambling, and he took it. He realised that he enjoyed the sound of her voice, and this fact was troubling him for a reason he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

“And who are you to be judging the meaning of someone else’s literature?” he asked, surprised to find that he was genuinely curious about her answer rather than antagonizing her as he usually did. He hadn’t held a conversation this long with someone else in the tower since he had arrived.

She looked almost guilty for a second. “Nobody, I guess,” she looked at her lap, then tilted her head to the side slightly. “I mean, I’m the reader, though. The meaning of literature usually comes down to what the reader gets out of it. Like, regardless of the author’s intent, the meaning belongs to each reader separately. And that’s just mine. It’s not right or wrong, it’s just how I always read it I think. You can tell me your idea of what it means when you’re done,” she glanced at him, a little bit hopeful.

“If you wish,” he said, turning the book over in his hand. He realized that he meant it, too. Something about her passion was infectious, as though she hadn’t been careful to rein her emotions in and now they were free to travel as they pleased, some opting for settling in his chest.

“This team has got computer nerds and science nerds, so I guess it’s only fair that the book nerds get a spot too,” Tony said, and Loki realised that he’d almost forgotten about his presence. The other three team members were crowded around the breakfast bar, eating a blissfully heated breakfast thanks to the wonders of electricity. (y/n) blushed.

“Books aren’t as useful as computers or science for superhero...ing,” she said.

“Depends how hard you throw them,” Barton pointed out helpfully. 

“Don’t give them ideas,” Tony said, jabbing his fork at Barton with raised eyebrows.

“Seriously, Agent Barton. Loki has a book right now, who knows what he’d planning to do with it now that you went and planted that idea in his head,” (y/n) said. 

“If I was planning to wipe out the Avengers, it would not be with a novel,” he scoffed, and (y/n) giggled at that. He gave her a sideways glare. He hadn’t been joking.

She yawned broadly, and with slight fascination Loki realized that this had been the most she’d contributed to any sort of conversation in the entirety of her stay here. The evidence from last night suggested that she had a tendency to ramble when she was nervous or relieved, and he realized that her filter also went down when she was the sort of exhausted one only gets when they remain awake for an entire 24 hours or so. It was like she was harsh and realistic most of the time, her guard up and preventing her from doing or saying anything too silly, and when she got too tired to keep it up all of the silly things she usually kept to herself just spilled from her lips as though a dam had been broken. It was almost like she was drunk, her judgement altered and her decisions all...questionable, at best. This state of hers teetered dangerously on the line between entertaining and annoying.

Her conversation with him had clearly been a result of her exhausted state, so it was with great surprised that he opened the door the next day to see her usual tense self on the other side.

“I was under the impression that I had the day off.”

“You do,” she said, and her expression seemed to suggest that she was immediately angry with herself for making such a stupid decision. “I just, well…Nevermind. It’s not important. Enjoy your day off,” she made a move to leave, but he leaned against the doorframe nonchalantly, raising his eyebrows.

“You’ve already bothered me, so you at least owe me an explanation as to why,” he said, his lips twitching subtly upward as she stopped and looked up at him again.

“Okay. Sorry, I just was thinking about our conversation about Shakespeare’s one play and thought you might like this one better,” she held out a brand new paperback, offering a small, nervous smile that had clearly been forced. He looked down at the book in her outstretched hands for a moment, then took it.

“ _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_?” He could practically feel her tension evaporate as he turned the book over to look at the back, somewhat interested.

“Yeah. It has the same sort of ‘people in love acting stupid’ theme from _Romeo and Juliet_ , but it’s funnier here. There’s kind of an early version of _Romeo and Juliet_ in this, actually, but they really focus on silly instead of serious. Also, there are fairies, and they wreak some serious havoc just for the hell of it. It’s a glorious mess, and I thought that might be more your thing.”

Her excitement was more controlled that evening. It wasn’t infectious, like it had seemed the other morning, but he could sense its presence in the slight upturn of her eyebrows and the reserved brightness in her eyes. He tilted his head, studying her, then nodded slowly. “I doubt that this would be enjoyable, especially after the brutal way he ended the last play, but I suppose I’ll read it and see,” he said. She brightened up a bit, and he sniffed disdainfully, looking down at the cover again and doing his best to hide how touched he was. “I have nothing better to do, after all,” he grumbled under his breath, but she just smiled at that and nodded a little too enthusiastically. 

“The ending is better. It’s a comedy. _Romeo and Juliet_ is a tragedy. The genres were way simpler in his time, and the ending usually determined the genre; in a tragedy, they die, and in a comedy, they get hitched.”

He looked incredulously at her. “‘Hitched’?” he asked, the slang putting a bad taste in his mouth.

“Married.”

“Ah.”

They both stood there for a moment in uncomfortable silence, neither of them making any move to leave. He spoke at last. “I still have the day off, and I intend to take full advantage of it, so if you’ve finished bothering me,” he punctuated his statement by waving the book in a ‘shoo’ gesture. 

She nodded. “Oh! Yeah, sorry, I’ll just…” she pivoted and started off swiftly down the hallway. She paused, hesitated, and threw a lukewarm “Enjoy your day off!” over her shoulder, but his door had already clicked itself shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it'll be late ik but a christmas/yuletide/holiday chapter is on its way, feat. some character development and a few setbacks in their weird, sort-of friendship. also i think reader will have some bonding time with my boi bruce in the couple of chapters in between and some plotty stuff will happen so stay tuned my dudes! also I hope you all had a lovely Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Boxing Day/Winter Solstice/Yule/holiday I didn't mention (or just a lovely winter break). To those of you poor souls working in customer service during this holiday helltime, I'm so sorry, it'll be over soon.


	5. Soliloquy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reader wakes up two days after Thanksgiving with serious regrets and an even more serious headache. Some introspection follows, and she bonds a bit with an unlikely companion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> good lord was this one hell of an adventure to write. I've got like 5 different chapters going that I originally intended to put here, but then scrambled around and mixed and matched for plot reasons, so here's this instead!! Enjoy!!

You blinked your eyes open to the eerie glow of your digital alarm clock, eyes heavy with sleep. You tried to oblige, squeezing them closed with a forceful insistence and trying to will yourself back into a slumber. The dim awareness that your Thanksgiving had been an unusual one surfaced, and you felt an involuntary shiver sneak its way down your spine as you squeezed your eyes--and, by extension, all of your muscles--a little tighter in a half-hearted effort to blink out of existence. It didn’t work, and you felt a smidgen disappointed despite yourself. You didn’t fight this time, allowing your restless eyes to remain open and roam as they pleased around the swirling darkness of your room. Your curtains were drawn to obscure the city lights, so the only illumination you found was your clock. The vague green light of the numbers outlined only the very edge of the bedside table on which they resided, leaving the rest of the room a shapeless, eternal void; it could have been anywhere from 6 PM to 5AM and you would be none the wiser, so time itself seemed a shapeless, eternal void to you as well in that moment. The unreality of it all stretched in from the boundless dark and curled around you like the blanket you were cocooned into, soft, suffocating, reassuring, nightmarish, and it occurred to you that if your alarm clock had been off, you wouldn’t be able to tell whether your eyes were open or closed.

The trance was broken with an abrupt start as you jolted yourself up into a sitting position, inhaling sharply and rubbing your unfocused eyes with a sudden vigor. You turned one way, long, slow, delibrate, and your back cracked with a satisfying noise. You turned the other way, getting the same response, and then arched your spine and rolled your head loosely around on your shoulders. You were shaking, you noticed, and an involuntary shudder crept its way up your spine at the realization. You probably hadn’t eaten properly, and you felt a dull, familiar disappointment settle in. To distract yourself, you kneeled at the head of your bed and grabbed your alarm clock, the bare skin of your calves slipping out from under the comforter to hit the cool air and make you shiver once more as you pulled the clock into your lap and read the bright, glaring numbers: 3:17 AM. You had slept for ten whole hours.

 _“That’s at least four hours longer than you usually sleep!”_ your head protested angrily, providing a pounding in your head as a helpful reminder not to do that again. The numbers were too bright, too loud in your head, and you squeezed your eyes shut, only to have them branded on the inside of your eyelids. Vague memories of talking Shakespeare with Loki and exchanging half-true holiday anecdotes from your childhood with Agents Romanov and Barton were floating around in your fuzzy, half-asleep brain.  
“Motherfucker,” you snarled to yourself. “Can’t you just keep your stupid mouth shut? Is it _really_ that _fucking_ hard?” You slammed the alarm clock down with a loud ‘thunk’ that vibrated through your already-aching head. The little plastic rectangle that held the clock’s batteries in clattered to the floor, and the numbers flickered weakly for a second before disappearing completely and leaving the whole room pitch black. The regret settled in immediately, heavy in your throat and rattling in your chest like a sob. “Stupid,” you berated yourself weakly, rubbing your head to ease the ache. You moved your hands to your arms in a protective hug, running them up and down to warm yourself some.

The darkness was complete now, engulfing you like water, and it kept you frozen in place for an unknown amount of time as you worked up the courage and willpower to move, to wrench yourself free of its grip and fix the poor clock which you had so unjustly taken your frustration out on, but it was perplexing, heavy, and you would have admonished yourself for being so childishly afraid of the dark if you could have brought yourself to move. The darkness at three in the morning was the height of unreality, and you were almost reluctant to break the heavy weight of the silence, but your voice rang out, sweet and bright, like church bells in the evening. “Hey, JARVIS? Could you turn the lights on, please?”

The lights eased on gently, bathing your room in soft illumination. “Thanks,” you said, looking up at the ceiling and smiling gratefully. You liked JARVIS. His objectivity and lack of humanity were an odd comfort to you in this place full of judgement and feelings.

“Of course, Miss Hamilton,” he replied in that wonderfully pleasant voice of his. You smiled again, genuinely this time.

You slid off of the bed to your knees, running your fingers over the carpet until you found the piece of the clock, and turned the clock over where the batteries were kept. One had popped ever so slightly out of place, so you pushed it back in with a ‘click’ and secured the piece. The numbers came back on immediately, reading ‘3:18 AM’. 

“JARVIS?”

“Yes, Miss Hamilton?”

“What time is it?”

“3:23 AM.”

You fiddled with the buttons on the clock for a moment before the correct time was displayed once more. “Thank you.”

“I’m happy to be of service,” he said brightly, and then left you to the silence of your room.

“Sorry about that, buddy,” you told the clock, thinking that you should be feeling silly for talking to an inanimate object but not really caring that much; it served as a reminder to keep your irrational feelings in check, and that was a reminder that you had clearly needed, considering your ridiculous behavior on Thanksgiving night. You needed to keep it together if you wanted to remain a semi-functioning member of society, and you needed to remain a semi-functioning member of society of you were going to keep this job. You squeezed your eyes shut again, face screwing up, and placed the clock carefully back on the side table with careful but shaky hands. 

Your outburst behind you, you got to your feet and winced at the rush to your head. You clearly needed something to eat, or drink, or all of the above, so you exited your room quietly and headed for the elevator. The dining area was lit, much to your surprise, and a figure was lounged on one of the couches opposite the room from you. Upon further inspection, the figure turned out to be Loki, and on even further inspection, it turned out to be a fast-asleep Loki, his seat turned to face the windows and the copy of _Romeo and Juliet_ closed neatly in his lap. You smiled a little. It seemed that you weren’t the only one with trouble getting to and staying asleep, as you immediately realized that he had become restless in his room and needed something else to do before sleep chose to take pity and bless him with a visit. It was a tactic that you had used many times, but it only occasionally worked for you. What struck you, particularly, was the place that he had come to rest: a huge glass window revealing the stunning view of a city he had once plotted to destroy, a piece of Midgardian literature in his lap. This struck you as odd, not in a bad way, but in a perplexing one, and you caught yourself staring, lips parted thoughtfully, face the picture of curiosity as you glimpsed your reflection in the glass and snapped immediately out of it. When had you walked across the room? It was rude to stare, and a bit creepy, especially because he was sleeping, for god’s sake. You scurried quietly toward the refrigerator to pull it open and cool your burning face, grabbing a bottled water and a few pieces of fruit before retreating immediately back into the elevator. 

Once the doors were closed and you were alone once more, you found yourself smiling. He was interested, you realized, in your culture, if only slightly. The conversation you had with him the morning after Thanksgiving played in your head, and excitement started to bloom in your chest. Culture was your expertise, so if he was interested in culture, he had gotten just the right partner. Maybe this was how you could do it, how you could avoid using force or other unseemly methods to keep him from stepping out of line. Maybe, if you just shared enough with him, he wouldn't hate you or your planet with such a fiery, stubborn rage. At best, perhaps he would even mellow a little, probably only into a grumpy discontentment. You'd take any improvement you could get, to be honest.

“Hey, JARVIS, one last question?”

“You may ask as many questions as you need, Miss Hamilton. My purpose is to answer them.”

“Where’s the nearest bookstore?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaand I just realized that this is becoming more like the arc with steven, the crystal gems, and peridot from season two of steven universe. I promise, that's pretty much where the similarities to that arc end, but my writing playlist is full of the SU soundtrack so I can't promise that the influences will disappear. 
> 
> Also, this takes place before the last chapter, to kind of explain reader a bit. My plan is to showcase character development in both of them by having two perspectives and two equal main characters for the first installment of this, so that we can see how each character thinks and also how their actions appear to others, because there is importance in both. Reader specifically has a shitload of development to do, and setting all that up has been a WORLD of fun. And I know that I updated late, with a huge gap between the last chapter and this one, and that this chapter is super short and not very plotty, but I've been busy and what little inspiration I've had, I've focused almost entirely on different parts of this story. For example, I've gotten a huuuge chunk of the Thor: Ragnarok arc completed. Yes, Ragnarok. I've got this planned to hell and back tbh. Anyway though I know this is late and short but I promise that the ten pages of nonsense schenanigans on Sakaar will be worth it someday when we finally get there. Anyway, enjoy your weekend and I hope you liked this chapter!!


	6. Archetypal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tension is at an all-time high as Stark sends the two agents on their first mission: community service.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oof. I kind of hate this chapter for a whole lot of reasons, but I wrote nine gosh darned pages of this nonsense so now you have to read it! I hope you enjoy, and I hope Loki isn't too weird or OOC. I had some trouble with pacing and dialogue here, and the angry conversation just happened completely on its own with no planning, so this kind of got out of my hands, all things considered. The next few chapters will be better, I promise!!

“Hey, Babysitters’ Club.” Tony exited the elevator, loud as always, and you winced slightly, not even bothering to react to his new nickname for you. Loki had departed only five minutes earlier, stealing an apple from the cupboard and then retreating back into the elevator as quickly as he had arrived, and you had been alone in the kitchenette ever since. Enjoying your breakfast in peaceful isolation had apparently been too ambitious a plan for you to pursue that day, and you knew from his tone that there was something incredibly unpleasant in store for you, but, as usual, you swallowed down your discomfort like cough medicine. 

“Good morning, Mr. Stark,” you replied through a mouthful of yogurt.

“A good morning, indeed. I finally found a project that I trust you guys with.” He tossed a manila folder in your general direction on his way to the coffee pot and it slid across the marble surface of the bar before slipping over the side and sending the contents flying across the tile floor of the kitchen. “My bad.”

“Good lord,” you sputtered out involuntarily, red-faced, as the last of the papers settled to the floor, which was now covered with artwork of a rather obscene nature. You set your spoon down into the yogurt and stared, mouth slightly ajar, filled with the sudden, freezing mortification at the idea that maybe you were seeing something you hadn’t been meant to see. “I...Mr. Stark, I think you gave me the wrong folder.”

“Hm?” He glanced down, gaze sweeping over the sea of painted swastikas and poorly-rendered genitals. “Oh,” he said, shaking his head, his voice mockingly grim. “I’m afraid not. Tragic, isn’t it? Anonymous vandalism of government property?” He pursed his lips, sarcasm dripping from every word he’d spoken. “This is a real opportunity for the two of you to go out and do some good in the world.” He took a long sip of his coffee, regarding you through tired, somewhat sympathetic eyes. “Again. Nothing personal, kiddo. I just don’t want-”

“Loki getting involved with proper Avengers stuff. I know. Really, I get it.” You stooped to gather the art, which was, upon closer inspection, photographs of street signs covered with crude spraypainted slogans, body parts, and symbols, each of which was labeled with an address. “So, what? We’re gonna paint over them? Why is this Avengers business, anyway?”

Tony leaned against the counter. “It’s not, but the public has been complaining to the police department for months and it hasn’t been taken care of. I figured that it would be a humbling experience for our resident supervillain. Oh, and it’ll be mostly scrubbing. Soap and water. Leave the painting to the professionals, you know?”

You looked thoughtfully at the pictures. “How do you know who’s been calling into the police department, anyway?”

He smiled dryly. “I needed something to assign him to so I called them up and asked what folks with court-mandated community service hours usually do. Turns out that sometimes,” he said, waving his hand in a broad sweeping motion over the papers. “They’re on graffiti duty.” You glanced up at him in disbelief, then quickly lowered your eyes.  
“Couldn’t you send us to a soup kitchen or something? That would be so much more productive than scrubbing dicks off of street signs all day.” You were trying (and mostly succeeding) not to sound too bitter as you shuffled together the last of the papers and straightened back up to your feet. He shrugged in response, grimacing a little.

“Well...I thought it’d be better not to force him into direct interaction with the civilians. At least for now.” Stark took a sip of his coffee, one eyebrow raised in an expression that said ‘I mean, I’ve got a point’.

“I get that,” you told him, even though you only sort of got it. This was rubbing you the wrong way, but you understood why he was doing it. He hated the guy, and you couldn’t entirely blame him, but you were indignant nonetheless. This just reeked of petty revenge, and it didn’t help your nerves at all when you realized that you would have to be the one to break your assignment to the grumpy Asgardian.

“Thanks for being such a good sport about this, kiddo.” He patted you on the back (a little too familiar a gesture for your liking), heading toward the elevator. “I appreciate it.” The doors swung shut behind him with a ding, and you let out a long sigh.

“Sure thing. It’s my job, and all,” you grumbled to yourself, rubbing your eyes and squaring your shoulders, mentally preparing yourself for the unpleasant conversation that was sure to follow.

That was easier said than done.

“Listen. Before you get mad at me and shoot the messenger, just know that Mr. Stark put us up to this, okay? Not my call.” You held your hands up in mock-surrender, trying earnestly to profess your innocence. Loki, who was seated across the table from you in the rec area, looked down at you with the usual amount of suspicion, his face adopting an exasperated expression as though he was already sick to death of having to work with you all day. He tilted his head a little as you spoke, his expression easing back into one of slight curiosity, and the piercing quality of his eyes had you tense and beginning to miss the dull annoyance that it had replaced. You took a deep breath, opening the folder. “So there’s this thing that people do, especially in cities, called street art, and it’s actually pretty cool if you want my opinion,” you started out, flicking through the papers. “They paint stuff on buildings and stuff and some of it is great, but then, because people are, well, people, you get shit like this.” You selected one of the more graphic photographs, which depicted a stop sign covered in poorly painted phallic imagery, and slid it across the table to him. “It’s disruptive, it’s ugly, it doesn’t mean jack shit, and even if it did, it would still be vandalism, which is a crime.”

He looked at you, then beside you to a bucket that held a bottle of dish soap and a dozen or so rags, and you could see the moment of realization flash in his eyes. Admittedly, it was pretty satisfying to watch as the dread brewed inside the man whose voice oozed disdain when he called you ‘mortal’, especially when the dread was a direct reaction to the news that he would be spending his day cleaning for mortals. “Gods, no. That is simply-”

“Humiliating? Yeah. I think that’s the idea.”

He glowered in response, looming like a dark cloud in front of you, but you held your ground and continued to look him steadily in the eye.

“Listen. Stark doesn’t trust you, for some wild, entirely unfounded reason,” you said, sarcasm practically dripping from your tone. “That’s certainly not _my_ fault, so the way I see it, only one of us has any room to complain. You can give me a hard time if you really want to, and drag this out an extra hour or two, OR…” You fished in your coat pocket for a second, producing a pair of yellow rubber gloves that Stark had left with the bucket and holding them up. “...you could suck it up like I did, don these uncomfortable yellow atrocities and become the hero this city apparently needs today.” You extended the gloves dramatically, and to your surprise, he seemed to consider your motivational speech for a moment, though he was staring at the gloves with obvious reproach. He looked up at you, and you noticed that, once again, you had somehow managed to surprise him, or at least catch him off guard enough for him to contemplate your existence. It was almost insulting how often you noticed him becoming surprised by something about you, because it implied that he hadn’t expected much of you to begin with, which was incredibly annoying. You could feel his defiance start to build, and before he got the chance to return to his room and slam the door in your face or refuse the gloves or something else equally childish and dramatic, you shoved the gloves more insistently toward him. “Do I have to remind you again that the alternative is prison? Come on. Let’s go.”

And that was how you found yourself, on a perfectly frigid Monday morning, scrubbing penises off of street signs with a reformed supervillain.

For the first twenty minutes or so, you wandered the streets in silence searching for the first sign. You could feel Loki’s eyes on you for a large part of the journey, and it made you tense with the unpleasant feeling that you were being studied. You tugged your hat down anxiously to hide your burning cheeks from the bitter cold and, simultaneously, your face from the intensity of his stare. You were bundled pretty securely, layering pants over a pair of leggings to keep yourself insulated and winding a scarf around your neck and lower face to keep them shielded from the cold, but to your absolute horror, the warmest article of clothing your companion had donned was a sweater and boots.

“You’re going to freeze to death, Loki!” you chastised him as a particularly chilly gust of wind threw your scarf over your shoulder, and he gave you a sideways look as you tugged it back into place, seeming almost surprised. Again.

“I am a frost giant. I was built for climates such as this.”

It was your turn to be surprised. “I didn’t know that was true,” you admitted quietly, your voice muffled by the thick cotton of the scarf. “I mean, some parts of Norse mythology say that you’re at least half giant, but other parts of Norse mythology also claim that you’re the mother of a horse, so I’m not sure which parts are reliable.”

Loki shrugged, and you blinked at him for a moment. “Is it true?”

He chuckled. “You mortals and your fairy tales will never cease to amuse me.”

You recognized that this was not an answer, and in a moment of wisdom, decided that perhaps you didn’t _want_ an answer. “There’s only one story that I really care to know about. I think it’s a poem. The one where Thor dresses up as a Freyja and almost marries the one guy to get his hammer back, is that one true?”

Loki looked at you, taken aback, and then let out a hearty laugh. “Absolutely,” he replied, mischief in his eyes, and you grinned broadly, not caring at all whether or not he was teasing you.

“I would pay to see Thor in a wedding dress. He’d probably look just as beautiful as he always does.” You snorted at the imagery that conjured.

Loki looked at you sideways with that piercing, almost investigative stare, his amusement fading to a tired sort of annoyance. “You mortal women certainly are obsessed with Thor and his beauty,” he commented, his tone condescending, and you wrinkled your nose.

“More out of jealousy than anything else. His hair is flawless,” you said, voice serious, and that earned a chuckle from your partner. You ruined a patch of previously unmarked snow under your boot with a satisfied smile, all thoughts of Norse mythology vanishing from your head with the crunch of the fresh snow. Even with all the cold, it was still a pretty nice day. The streets were still buzzing with too many people for your liking, but the weather was keeping a portion of the usual crowd indoors, leaving some places blissfully less busy than average. Muted Christmas music hummed from some of the shops nearby, and you hummed along under your breath.

“I believe we’ve found our first sign,” Loki said, and you knew simply from the sound of his voice that this was going to be one hell of a mission. You looked up, and up, and up, and the street sign confirmed this notion.

“Oh, shit,” you mumbled under your breath. You had to crane your neck dramatically to get a good look at the face of the stop sign, which glared down at you from a good seven feet off the ground, and winced at the nasty, bigoted symbols scrawled carelessly across it. “Could you…?” You looked to him hopefully, but he shook his head and raised his hand up. The sleeve of his thick black sweater slipped back to reveal a silver cuff etched with intricate blue runes, and you frowned.

“My magic is practically useless outside of Stark Tower, without Thor to adjust this,” he explained monotonously.

“You aren’t going to like the alternative,” you said nervously. “But this is my first mission with the Avengers, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to fail it.”

“You speak so highly of that band of incompetent fools. Why is it that you chase their approval so desperately?” he scoffed, dropping his hand and adjusting the sleeve to cover the cuff once more. “It’s childish, and futile in the first place. You can’t be an equal to them as long as you’re assigned to me.”

You glared a little, but opted to ignore his cruel jab, which seemed to be coming out of nowhere. You had been under the impression that the two of you were beginning to bond, and the mercurial nature of the god was like a slap in the face. To make matters worse, he was hitting dangerously close to home. “I think there’s only one way for us to grow seven feet tall without a ladder or your magic,” you said, attempting to change the subject. There came that stare of his once more, sharp, along with the uncanny feeling that he could see right through you.

His expression dropped suddenly as he processed what you were implying, and he paled even further, if that was possible. He looked conflicted for a moment, almost ready to call Heimdall and head directly back to Asgard right then and there, prison or no prison, and you rubbed your face with a huff of frustration. “Look, Loki, this isn’t my ideal afternoon either, but it’s our job for now, and-”

“Why?”

You blinked. “What do you mean?”

“You keep talking about this like you have to go through with all of this, like it’s your duty, but you could resign if you so chose. If you hate your occupation with such ferocity, as you keep insisting, why do you not simply abandon your post?”

Your mouth hung ajar for a second, but you collected yourself. “I’m the only one who can-”

“No. Do not attempt to convince me of that again. The others, no matter how much I despise them, are plenty capable of looking after me with all of their damned security protocols in place. You are not the only one with the skills required for this position. They simply do not want to, and you do not either, by the sound of your constant whining, so why do you remain?”

“Their jobs are more important than mine was. They’re heroes, for god’s sake, and I was just a…” you hesitated. “Just a SHIELD Agent. Their time is more valuable.”

He snorted, and your heart started going wildly out of control as the anxiety started to build. “You talk as though you worship the ground they walk upon. It’s so embarrassingly mortal of you. Your race is always seeking out gods, in the form of celebrities, heroes, leaders...you devote yourselves so blindly. It’s a pathetic sign of your weakness as a species.”

You swallowed hard. “I don’t _worship_ them. I respect them for what they’ve done for me and my people. They’ve protected us, kept us safe! They’re genuinely good people and I only give them the respect they’ve earned. Besides,” you glowered. “Don’t think I haven’t realized that you’re trying to wind me up just to get me off topic. I haven’t forgotten about our job, no matter how hard you’re trying to distract me. You’re just deflecting,” you said, in a thinly veiled attempt to do exactly that and force him to shut his stupid mouth.

“Again with your talk of this assignment of yours! You agreed to take a job that none of them felt they could handle, and as thanks, they send you running around on pointless missions such as this. They leave you--a remarkably fragile human--unattended to look after the most dangerous being on this miserable little planet, just so they don’t have to deal with me themselves. Yet, after all you have already done for them, you allow them to ignore you and degrade you with useless, humiliating tasks all designed to make me miserable.” He turned to face you, and you clenched your jaw, arms folded across your chest as you bit back indignant retorts. “As you said earlier, it isn’t your fault that they do not trust me, but is it not troubling to you that these heroes of yours have no problem allowing you to deal with the consequences of my actions?” His eyes glowed slightly with satisfaction as you glared openly, biting down hard on your cheek to keep your angry tears at bay. He broke his controlled, apathetic expression with a mirthless grin. “Oh, I’m right, aren’t I? They treat you with less respect than they do me, and still you glow under every hint of their approval. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I believe this is about your own personal desire for recognition, rather than your ‘respect’ for these so-called heroes.”

The squawk of bitter laughter that escaped you was a surprise to you both, and you pulled your hat off, scratching your head vigorously to relieve some of your anxious tension.  
“Sorry, oh man, I’m trying to take you seriously and all, but…” You squinted at him. “Well. I don’t disagree with what you’re saying or anything, but this is really rich coming from you.” His grin vanished with frightening speed. “You just don’t _act_ like you want approval. That’s the only difference between what you do and what you’re making fun of me for doing. You seek it out wherever you can find it, but you’d rather die than admit it and tarnish your precious pride.” You spat out the words through a haze of pain and anger, throwing them at him with calculated strength and accuracy as you sought out his weak spots. You could see it in his face every time you hit the mark a little too accurately, and felt a wild sort of satisfaction burning in your chest. “You’re so pissed off at Thor all the time, but I don’t think you hate him as much as you say. With how weird you got earlier over mortal women and how you think they’re all obsessed with Thor or whatever, I’m going to make a wild guess and say that…” You paused, mock-contemplative, as though you were calculating something. “You’ve always secretly felt inferior to him and you’ve been trying to compensate for it and gain the approval of your family and everyone else for your entire life. Am I getting it?”

He scoffed. “I could never feel inferior to that _oaf_. If I am angry, it is only because I find him undeserving of all the praise that is dumped so freely into his lap.”

“You know, a lot of narcissists project an inflated ego to cover their inferiority complex.” He rolled his eyes and opened his mouth, no doubt to snap some witty retort, but you cut him off. “No. Listen. I have so much more I could say, but I’m done with this argument. I’ve been tolerant of your shitty attitude, because your situation is shitty and you’re _hurting_ , but I refuse to put up with this ridiculous impulse of yours to prove that you’re smarter and more capable than me for any longer. You don’t have to point out that I put up with more shit than I should just because I’m,”-- _lonely, and I want people to like me no matter the cost_ \--“insecure and looking for approval or whatever because I already know that. I’m more observant than you think I am, and I am far more competent than I think you realize, so I suggest that you stop being ungrateful and nasty before you drive away the only person who agreed to work with you and end up back in a cell on Asgard.” You spat the firey accusations at him, embers glowing behind your eyes, and in that moment, he found that you bore an uncanny resemblance to a dragon. His silence seemed to encourage you, and you growled out one last sentence that hung in the air. “Oh, I’m right, aren’t I,” you said, flinging his own words back in his face like mud, hoping with earnest that it was hitting the mark. The steam from your breaths puffed from your mouth like smoke and curled around to frame your face, your teeth bared in a savage half-grimace-half-grin that could almost be compared to a snarl. Your cheeks were flushed with indignance and cold, and your hair was mussed and wild from being squashed under your hat and disturbed by your fingers, and in that moment you were almost the most fascinating thing he had ever seen. He hadn’t noticed the danger behind your words before, but you uttered them with such slicing accuracy that he actually felt a small twinge of respect. He said nothing, and you felt the tension start to ease back.

With a start, you realized that you had captured the curiosity of a few passerby, who were either nosily eavesdropping with little subtlety or hustling past a little too quickly to be normal. Thoroughly embarrassed, you gave them an apologetic smile pulled your hat back over your head with a twinge of shame, eyes downcast. “We should probably go ahead and clean before we attract any more attention. I don’t want to be here, and you clearly aren’t keen on being stuck out here either, so there’s no point in dragging it out.”  
To your surprise, he knelt down with an exaggerated sigh, and stared at you expectantly through tired eyes. “Are you going to stand there gaping at me or are we going to get this over with?” he snapped, a little too harshly.

You tucked the folder into your backpack with trembling hands and set it down, nodding rapidly. “Yeah, of course, sorry.” You swung a leg over each of his shoulders, hands on his head to brace yourself as he eased back to his full height. “Mother of god,” you squeaked, and he let out an irritated grunt of pain to let you know that you were clinging a little too tightly to his hair. “Sorry,” you said sheepishly, pulling your gloves from your pockets and slipping them over your winter pair. “Could...could you hand me a rag?”

He pulled one from the bucket, which was in the crook of his elbow, and held it up to you. You took it carefully, then leaned with one palm against the sign and started to scrub at the tasteless symbols, your hands steadying slightly at last. The guilt that had been knotting in your stomach was almost forgotten as disgust boiled in its place. “People can be so shitty,” you commented lowly, and he hummed in agreement.

“That is one topic we see eye to eye on,” he replied, and you could hear the stiffness in his tone, a stark reminder of your argument that left your cheeks burning.

“God, I wish we could see eye to eye. Reaching cupboards would be much easier,” you joked weakly. The paint was fading, slowly but surely, and you smiled lightly as the first of the swastikas vanished completely.

The rest of your adventure was spent mostly with icy silence hanging between the two of you, save for the two blocks you spent humming “Ice Ice Baby” after reluctantly cleaning a stop sign that had been cleverly subtitled “collaborate and listen”, and you returned to Stark Tower just as the sun had vanished from the cloudy November sky, stomping into the lobby and relishing in the heat. You stepped into the elevator, and Loki followed, still towing the bucket of darkened soapy water in the crook of his arm. You both stared ahead, but the silence of the elevator was starting to dredge up your guilt once more. “Hey, Loki?”

He looked at you, and you were distracted for a split second by the stormy gray-blue of his eyes. They reminded you of the sky before a storm, rolling with clouds and flashes of light. You looked down. “I’m sorry.”

You couldn’t completely read his reaction, but the silence was heavy in the air as he stared at you, suspicion lacing his glare like arsenic. “Your words had little impact. Do not flatter yourself with the assumption that I value your opinion,” he said, but his voice was thick, and you could feel that he was ever so slightly nervous, which left you with an odd wave of compassion. You looked up again, and smiled at him.

“Alright,” you replied quietly, and amusement curled your lips up further. “On an unrelated note, did you enjoy A Midsummer Night’s Dream?” you asked, one eyebrow raised pointedly. He reddened slightly.

“I found it to be a much more enjoyable read than I had been expecting.”

“I thought so,” you said. “I thought, perhaps, you might be able to relate to one of the characters.”

“Puck?” he asked, as though he had been expecting this. Your face lit up with a mischievous grin.

“Bottom.”

“So you think me capable of bedding the fairy queen? How flattering,” he countered without missing a beat, eyes dancing.

“I think you have the head of an ass,” you replied, grin wide, and he flashed you the slightest smile in return.

“Well, in any case, I thought it a far more accurate representation of your species than the other play was. It is difficult to do justice to the sheer stupidity of their actions through only writing, but this Shakespeare fellow has certainly succeeded.”

The elevator doors swung open, and he moved to exit, but before you could think it through you reached out and caught his arm. “Hey, do you want to head up to the kitchen with me? Get a hot drink to warm up a bit?”

There was that surprise again, but this time, it seemed pleasant. “Need I remind you that I am a Jötunn?”

“A cold drink, then? To cool down?”

The elevator doors closed once more, and you let go of his arm, feeling your confidence evaporate under the intensity of his stare. He was reading you, like a novel, almost, and you shifted uncomfortably. He pressed the button for the kitchen floor, and you relaxed, a slight shudder of relief flowing down your arms and out your fingertips. 

“That would be nice,” he confessed, sounding almost pleased, and you smiled up at him, suddenly under the direct impression that perhaps things were going to be a little different in the lonely tower from here on out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've updated the playlist for this a lot, so check it out on tumblr if you haven't already! the tag is here: https://snake-mom.tumblr.com/tagged/playlist%3A-duet
> 
> it's full of foreshadowing and stuff so have fun guessing which characters each song applies to!! and have fun guessing what plot stuff it fits with because honestly this is planned so far into the future (and past) you don't even know.


	7. Exposition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> During sleepy chat between Loki and his newfound polite acquaintance, she reveals to him some interesting details about her life before SHIELD. They bond over their shared hatred for Avengers merchandise and--to nobody's surprise--have some differing views when it comes to ethics.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm exhausted and i didnt even proofread this haha enjoy! this is literally just another six pages of me rambling about stuff and probably not succeeding at subtlety

The tea and conversation they shared that evening was strange, to be brief. To be a bit lengthier, one might say that it was stiff, awkward, but not without an insecure sort of desperation that both parties could sense in the undertones of each exchange. Her words were all light, careless, but her smiles and the way she brightened at his responses all sang out ‘I am lonely in this place, and it is just now that I am beginning to realize that I don’t have to be’, and his sharp, instinctively icy words were laced with unspoken apologies: ‘forgive me, for I am forever suspicious of others and their intentions, since my own have never been honest’. They shouldn’t quite fit, not in theory--their conversation was made up entirely of rough edges, eggshells that had been crushed beneath the clumsy heels of their boots, and missed punchlines to jokes that weren’t even funny in the first place--but somehow, they managed. It was as though they were both off key in a way that, by some quirk of fate, swirled together to form a surprisingly harmonious chord.

They didn’t talk in the morning. Her knocking wrenched him out of his solitude as usual, and they rode the elevator in silence as they always had, aside from a new sort of understanding that needed no acknowledgement. They ate breakfast in silence alongside a few others, who chatted and teased and laughed back and forth until their duties called them away, and then they set out once more armed with rubber gloves (and a stepladder, this time) to fight their own little battle against petty crime on the streets of New York, still, in silence. 

It wasn’t clear what ultimately broke the quiet. Was it the weight of the long day tugging at their eyelids and loosening their inhibitions? Was it the surreal version of reality that the dark cloak of night pulled in as it swept through the day, painting the sky with stars, lighting up the city and transforming the world that lay outside the window look like something out of a dream? Neither of them really knew, and they didn’t dwell on it for too long. They both seemed to nonverbally agree that it was better to just accept things for what they were rather than looking a gift horse straight in the teeth.

“So, really? What were your thoughts about _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_? You didn’t really elaborate yesterday,” she asked him, hopping up onto the marble counter as the tea kettle began to hiss softly. “What do you think?” Her hair was neater than usual, he noted, as though she had pulled it carefully back into a ponytail rather than simply yanking it out of her face and pinning it there with whatever was convenient. He’d seen her shove it out of her way hastily, impatient fingers pushing and pulling bandanas, clips, bobby pins, elastics, rubber bands, and occasionally, even pencils, into place, usually haphazard and rarely completely effective. She had taken the time to pull it back with care this evening, and before he got the chance to analyze her motivations, a thought intruded to present him with the idea that perhaps he liked her hair best when she left it down.

“I think that you’ve placed your feet upon a surface that is intended for food,” he said, referring to her sock feet, which were curled underneath her on the counter.

“Well, if Stark doesn’t want me climbing on the counters, he should have made the cupboards easier to reach,” she countered, turning around so she could retrieve a mug. Her fingers tapped lightly across the available mugs before she pulled a cheesy Captain America one and handed it back to Loki, who took it reluctantly. She selected a Black Widow one for herself, then turned back around to face him. “I can’t tell whether he’s a narcissist or just cheap, but this is ridiculous. I’m spending my first paycheck on a mug that doesn’t have my coworkers on it.”

“It would be a wise purchase, but I’d suggest that you invest in a new wardrobe before you criticise the Man of Iron for being ‘cheap’.” He drummed his fingernails lightly on the cup, which changed to a dark black as his magic shimmered over it in a blue wave.

She looked down at her hoodie, which had the Avengers’ Tower logo on it, and huffed out a sigh. “There’s a difference between ‘cheap’ and just plain ‘poor’, Loki.” 

“So you were of the lower class before Stark recruited you?” he asked, leaning back against the breakfast bar.

“Middle class-ish. And my work with SHIELD started out as kind of...an internship? So I didn’t get paid for a few years, and then when I actually started to get paychecks I never really had the opportunity to spend them on my own clothes or cups or whatever.” The tea kettle interrupted their conversation, its steady buzzing rising in pitch to a shrill wail. She hopped down to pour the boiling water into her cup, aromatic steam billowing from her cup as she set the kettle back and ducked past him to get the sugar.

“As I said yesterday, I found that your mortal play was a surprisingly adequate read,” he said, replying to her earlier question. She looked up from where she was spooning generous amounts of sugar into her mug and raised her eyebrows. 

“You sound moved,” she replied with her dry, sharp tongue. “No, seriously though, some regard it as one of the greatest works of literature ever recorded, so I’m glad to know that you found it ‘adequate’.”

“It was, indeed, the greatest work of literature you humans have ever recorded. Timeless. Is that better?”

“Much,” she said, face a mask of dead seriousness, betrayed only by the twitching corner of her mouth.

“I enjoyed the irony. It was a cleverly spun tale,” he said. “The pining was much more amusing to read, though I almost would have preferred an ending where Puck left those four hopeless lovebirds to their misery.”

She laughed a little at that. “I think he should have left them alone entirely. Helena and Demetrius in particular.” She swung open the refrigerator and filled the rest of her mug with milk.

“Why do you bother with the tea? Why not just drink sugared milk, with those ratios?” He eyed her cup with distaste.

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Plain sugared milk is basically the only thing I can think of that is worse than plain leaf water.”

He squinted at her incredulously. “You mortals are excessively fond of your whipped cream. Is that not simply sugared milk?”

She looked bemused for a second, pausing with the milk halfway back into the refrigerator. “Holy shit,” she said lowly, placing the milk back and closing the refrigerator with exaggerated slowness. “You’re right. Oh my god, you’re right.”

“That is usually the case,” he remarked, his tone bored but his eyes gleaming as they fixed on her teasingly.

“I seem to recall that you used to preach that whole ‘humans crave subjugation’ thing, and that your speech was followed immediately by a group of superpowered humans beating the shit out of you to keep you from subjugating them,” she said. “But whatever you say, dude.”

“I resent that. The Avengers are outliers, but the rest of your kind is weak and desperate for guidance, which is exactly why Puck was right to meddle with the humans. They would have simply continued with their ridiculous, petty whining otherwise.”

“That tie-in was clever, and so was the deflection. If you ever want to distract me, the best way to do it is story discussion,” her eyes caught mischievously in the light of the room as she glanced over her shoulder at him, heading for one of the chairs by the window. “And I really don’t think he should have messed with Demetrius. That always bugged me.”

“Why?” Loki followed her, taking his place on the couch. She curled up on the armchair, pressing her mug to her chest to warm herself with her hands hidden in her sleeves. She tilted her head slightly, looking at him with an odd sort of calculation in her eyes, as though she was trying to figure something out.

“Because he didn’t love Helena. He still doesn’t love Helena at the end, but he’s under a mind-altering spell that forces him to be. The ethics of it are all out of whack.”

He stirred the tea thoughtfully, watching the water darken as more of the tea seeped into it. “Who are you to be judging that? One could argue that, if we are going by your silly human code of ‘ethics’, it might be Puck’s duty to act in the interest of their happiness. It’s not as though Demetrius could have chosen who to be in love with in the first place, so is it really so terrible that Puck meddled a bit and arranged it so he’d fall for the woman who would cause him less distress?” he took a drink. It was too hot, but temperatures mattered little to him in general. They were all the same on his skin when they weren’t scalding or subzero, and even those burned in the same unmistakable way.

(y/n) leaned her head on her hand thoughtfully, looking at him through surprisingly unreadable narrow eyes. “That’s an odd stance, but I understand what you’re saying. I don’t agree, but I understand.”

They sat in silence for a moment, until he remembered a question that had been nagging at him ever since they had gone out to scrub signs--since Thanksgiving, really--and asked her. “Your knowledge of Norse mythology is impressive. How did you learn so much?”

She straightened up a bit, looking up, her cheeks flushed from the heat of her tea. The moisture in the steam had brought some of her loose hairs up to curl around her face, and the brightness in her eyes suited all of this very well. “My father was a professor! He taught a mythology class, and it was his whole life, so all of my bedtime stories were folktales and lore and stuff, and when I got older we used to talk about the history involved with the tales all the time. He specialised in Greek mythology, but I learned a lot about Norse stuff too.”

“He _was_ a professor? Does he not teach anymore?”

“He passed away a little while ago, so, uh, I really don’t know what he does anymore. That depends on theological belief, and all of the potential afterlives, which is a whole separate conversation,” she was rambling a bit, and took a long gulp of tea as if to force herself to be quiet, then made an unpleasant face. “That was still just a little too hot and now my tongue hurts.”

He made an effort to look nonplussed, as not to make her any more uncomfortable. He could practically feel her unease as she fidgeted, her burning face downturned and eyes fixed on the cup in her lap. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he managed, and she chuckled, smiling gratefully at him.

“It wasn’t that recent. Thanks, though.” She kept her eyes on him for a second, curious. “What about you? What in the world was it like growing up on Asgard?”

“Unbearable,” he huffed. “Believe it or not, but hearing about Thor’s greatness all the time grows rather tiresome.”

“You really shouldn’t try watching television,” she advised him immediately. “The news channels are always going on about Mr. Stark. It gives me a headache. And when it’s not a story about him, it’s a commercial for one of his products or a dumb off brand action figure or something.”

He frowned. “Imagine that same level of nauseating promotion, but for your sibling. It was unbearable.”

“I wish I could relate to all that sibling drama you have going on there, but I can’t. I don’t have any siblings. Well, any siblings that I know of.” She took another drink of her tea, and this one was apparently bearable, as she didn’t make another face.

He raised an eyebrow. “That you know of?”

She laughed. “I haven’t really met my mom, so I have no idea if she’s had any other kids. I mean, I’ve obviously met my mother, I spent nine months inside of her and all that, so we were pretty well-acquainted at one point, but I don’t remember any of that. You know what I mean.”

“Your childhood must have been incredibly peaceful without any siblings.”

She threw her head back and laughed, a deep, wild, laugh, one that made her seem to glow with raw amusement. “Ohhh, you have no idea. I was a handful, from what I remember. I was constantly getting into trouble.”

“You and I are similar in that regard,” he said, smiling a little. “I’m not quite sure how my mother managed, and I’m even less sure why her response to my unruliness was to teach me magic. It didn’t help; I didn’t get any less mischievous, I simply was more capable of hiding it.”

“That does sound like a bit of a lapse in logic on her part. It was kind, though, and it sounds like she must have had a lot of faith in you to have trusted you with her magic.”

He stared out the window, studying the flickering of the city lights, and turned her statement over in his head. She stirred at her tea, not taking any notice to his silence, and he realised that the probably hadn’t intended for her words to land so sharply. He drank the last of his tea, and noted the way the traffic outside had begun to dwindle ever so slightly. The Tower mirrored this sleepy emptiness, dark and silent, and it was beginning to grate on his nerves. Suddenly, as though his senses had been heightened, _everything_ began to grate on his nerves, and he cleared his throat, getting to his feet with a slight harshness. He bid her a sharp farewell, which she returned more softly, blinking at him through confused, almost worried eyes, which did nothing to ease his sudden and acute annoyance with her and everything around him. She was so rooted in her ethics, he remembered, and he could feel her eyes on him as he left, and the feeling that he was being judged was starting to eat away at his pride. The elevator doors closed him off from the dining room, and he felt another wave of something like annoyance roll over him. He bristled.

That was quite enough of her insight for one evening, thank you very much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay i promise that plot stuff is going to start happening sometime in the future....ive got a whole scene with Nat written up too, which will bring up some really interesting conflict, but that might have to wait a chapter or two for the sake of pacing. i rewatched thor: ragnarok the other day and did some serious work on the Sakaar chapters (which I affectionately refer to 'the trash' in my head and notes), and also I had a dream in which i had a breakthrough while writing this because of a song i listened to. i woke up with tears all over my face so it must have been a pretty emotional dream, and i don't remember much of it, but i'm about 80% sure that the song was from the hsm2 soundtrack. my unconscious mind seriously knows what's up.
> 
> also thank you guys so much for all of your comments, bookmarks, kudos, and support! it means the world to me, honestly, and i love yall so much <3


	8. The Mentor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (y/n)'s loneliness is remedied a bit when she goes to Doctor Banner for sleep medication and instead ends up reaching out to him during a rough patch in his week. Loki starts doing some of his trademark scheming, which, much to the author's disappointment, threatens to make (y/n)'s life a lot more complicated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO I'm here!! Sorry I haven't updated in an outrageous amount of time, as my writer's block has been nasty and also coupled with a really freakin busy chunk of...life. You guys know how it goes sometimes, I'm sure. 
> 
> Anyway, I was looking back on the previous chapters and really kicking myself for not thinking through the plot more thoroughly (what's a storyboard idk her). I was unhappy with a lot of the stuff here, such as the pacing, character development, dialogue, and weird filler bits where I don't need filler bits, so I've made a decision about this fic. I'll be writing and posting here, still, so don't worry if you really like this, but I'm going to be treating this as the sort of rough-drafty version. I like getting feedback and posting my fics because it gives me motivation to write, but I'm not happy with how little coordination these chapters have, so I am planning on doing a complete overhaul and rewrite of this story after getting that initial feel for it and understanding of how I want to write it from completing this first draft. 
> 
> It's such good writing practice, so I'm going to keep at it and leave the old chapters as they are even though there are loads of edits I'm tempted to go in and do right now.
> 
> tl;dr: I think I'll make this the beta version and clean it up later to make it more smooth, with better pacing and...readability.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me this far!

You were pretty sure you’d said something to upset Loki--and by “pretty sure”, you meant that his sudden and intense wave of misplaced anger would have knocked you on your ass if you hadn’t already been sitting down--but you didn’t have much time to marinate in your newfound solitude. As quickly as Loki departed, Agent Barton took his place, looking disheveled and about ready to pass out. “Good evening. Er, morning. You’re up late,” he commented dryly, eyeing the clock as he made a beeline for the coffee machine.

“Morning,” you replied, downing the rest of your tea with a mouthful that was a little too big, causing your eyes to water as you strained to suppress a cough. “Couldn’t sleep.” Your throat ached and you set down your mug, feeling a wave of shame wash over you as you contemplated what you could’ve said to make your new friend so unhappy.

“Heard you were on graffiti duty,” Agent Barton commented, pouring some aromatic, steaming coffee into a Hawkeye mug. You nodded, then realized that he wasn’t looking at you, and spoke instead.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t take it personal. It’s not because of you.”

“Mm-hmm,” you offered. So I’ve been told.

“I bet it’s not easy working with Loki.” Barton looked at you, the exhaustion on his face making him look for a moment a lot older and wiser than perhaps he was. “If you ever need to talk to someone,” he said, and you perked up a little bit at that. “I’m sure Tony would set you up with a decent shrink.” He paused. “Or, you know, sleeping pills. You’re gonna need your rest on a team like this.”

“Okay,” you said, deflating ever so slightly. “Thanks. I’ll think on it.”

He studied you (or maybe just spaced out a little while he happened to be looking in your direction. It could’ve been either one, really) for a second, then turned back toward the elevator. “Goodnight. Morning,” he corrected himself quickly.

“Morning.”

You decided to take this as a positive interaction, albeit with a very awkward, half-asleep Hawkeye, and went to wash your mug in the sink feeling just a little better. You’d already seen enough therapists for one lifetime, if you said so yourself, but it was pleasant to know that Agent Barton was worried enough to suggest this to you. The water in the sink ran hotter than you’d expected, and you paused, watching your hands turn an angry red for as long as you could bear before shutting off the faucet with a hasty snap. 

You didn’t sleep that night--because did you ever?--and instead spent a surprising amount of time thinking over what Clint had suggested. Not the therapy bit, so much as the implication that you could use someone to talk to. You thought back to how readily you had spilled your guts to Loki and cringed. Were you oversharing? Being too...forward, for lack of a better term? You could hardly remember the last time you’d had a “normal” friendship: one with proper boundaries, and an equal ratio of giving and receiving, and now you could hardly picture what such a friendship would look like. So, all things considered, a friend wasn’t a very realistic option.

Sleeping pills, on the other hand? Now there was something obtainable, something you could probably benefit from, you thought as you rolled over in bed, eyes still open as you watched the clock and waited, tense, for seven o’clock to roll around.

* * *

You probably should’ve gone to Mr. Stark for a request like this, but something about him made you apprehensive. You didn’t want to bother him, or, more likely, you just didn’t want to interact with him, but either way talking to Stark was off the table. However, sleeping meds couldn’t be off the table, because four days of working with nothing but stony silence from Loki had you exhausted. That left only one other Avenger who knew what the hell he was talking about when it came to science: The Incredible Hulk himself. He was far less intimidating to you than Iron Man, and the irony of that fact was not lost on you as you knocked on the door to his lab with lightly shaking hands. To your surprise, it swung open under your touch, and you stepped inside, instantly getting the sense that something was wrong. 

“Doctor Banner?” you called out hesitantly, noting some broken glass on the floor and hurrying towards it. “Doctor Banner!”

He was leaning heavily on the counter, his hands in his hair and his elbows on some scattered papers, and instantly you got the sense that he was overwhelmed. It wasn’t even the green tinging his neck that gave it away, but rather the tension in his posture and the rapid way his breath was heaving in his chest. The symptoms were all too familiar, and you felt a sad pang of sympathy as you evened your voice, stepping towards him with practiced gentleness as not to upset him further. “Doctor Banner, are you alright?” you asked softly, placing your hand tentatively on his upper arm. He evidently hadn’t heard you, as he jumped, meeting your eyes with a look so frightened you had to suppress a cringe. 

“Agent Hamilton,” he said, panicked, and you held up a hand as if to show that you didn’t mean any harm. You kept your other hand on his arm, trying your hardest to help him reign in his feelings of fear and frustration.

“Hey, calm down,” you told him, and it seemed as though he did, at least as much as he could. “I’m sorry I let myself in, but the door was open. Is this a bad time? Should I go?”

“No, it’s okay, I was just-” he fished for an excuse and you gave him a small, sympathetic smile to let him know that he didn’t need one. “Anyway. I’m not busy or anything, do you need something?”

“I, uh.” You paused, a little worried to withdraw your hand, but did so anyway, albeit a little slowly, as you considered whether or not it would be appropriate to admit that you were looking for drugs at this point in time. You decided to approach the issue with a little more delicacy than that. “Well, I’ve been having some trouble getting to sleep, and I was wondering if you had any, ah, advice, or something?”

He looked at you tiredly. “So Clint told you that I get people sleeping pills.”

Your eyes widened in an obvious attempt to feign innocence, and he watched, somewhat amused, as you stumbled through a denial.

“Well, I can’t. I don’t have the credentials necessary to prescribe medication like that.” You were about to muster an apology, but he held up his hand. “I’ll get you an appointment with a doctoe who _can_ , though. And it’s okay, kid, working with Loki can’t be an easy job,” he said, rubbing his eyes to wake himself up a bit. 

“That’s what people keep telling me.”

“What are you saying, then? That he’s not all bad, or that he’s a changed man? Something like that?” He got to his feet and started to rummage around in the papers as a half-hearted attempt to organize them.

“No. Just that he seems no worse than the earthly variety of self-important asshole. Nobody commends, you know, every single employee to ever work at a Walmart this way and I’d argue that each and every one of them has a harder job than I do.” You hoped that your jokes would lighten his mood a little, and to your excitement, it seemed to actually work.

He chuckled, pulling his glasses down from the top of his head. “That’s...well, that’s a good point. But I’d wager that Loki is smarter than your average Walmart customer, and scarier, too.”

“Smarter, definitely, but I don’t think I’ve ever been more scared than I was the time I was in line behind some pissed off lady trying to return an expired jar of mayonnaise. It was a trauma I don’t think I’ll ever fully recover from.”

Doctor Banner snorted, sweeping a few papers into the trash as he continued to clear off his workspace. Something occurred to you as you studied his weary face.

“Hey, have you eaten today? Do you need to get some breakfast?”

He blinked at you, and his deer-in-headlights expression told you _yes_. “No,” he said. “I’m fine, don’t wo-”

“I don’t want you giving me medical advice while you’re barely awake.”

“That’s...that’s reasonable. Alright.”

“Do you want to go...you know. Out? Of the tower? We have the day off and shit.”

He smiled, but looked as though he might say no, his tone hesitant. “We do have the day off. And shit.” His expression changed as something in him seemed to cave, and he suddenly looked as though he really, _really_ needed something like that on this particular Sunday. “I heard there’s a pretty decent iHop around here somewhere.”

It turned out that this was something that you, as well, really needed, and you realized this as you shuffled through the snow and toward the iHop with a disheveled Doctor Banner. A real day off, a day where you could leave the tower without Loki, and a day off not wasted by locking yourself away in your room. A real, honest to god day off.

You consumed an impractical amount of pancakes, and the conversation was awkward, but pleasant.

“I know you said that you don’t mind Loki, but are you liking your job here? Graffiti and all?” Doctor Banner asked, looking out of place with a plate of pancakes in front of him.

“Sneaky question. If I say no, you’d probably report me to Mr. Stark. Well, if you ask me…” You straightened your back, sitting dramatically taller and summoning up a forcefully serious tone that would give even Captain America a run for his money. “Any job that rids the world of those egregious swastikas is a job worth doing, if you ask me. Downright heroic work, and I’m honored to be doing it.”

“Fighting Hydra one piece of Nazi imagery at a time,” he replied, eyes bright. You laughed heartily.

“That’s the idea, I’m sure.” You dug around your plate, cutting another forkful of pancake to eat. “What about you? I mean, I’ve heard a whole damn lot about the Hulk, but not so much about Doctor Banner. Do you like your job?”

“It’s a job. I mean, what else am I gonna do at this point? Who’d hire the Hulk? I’m a liability at best.” He said such sad things with a matter-of-fact casualty that broke your heart a little.

“You could try your hand at gardening. I can’t think of anything more zen and...generally rage-free than gardening.”

“What’s the opposite of a green thumb? Whatever’s the opposite of a green thumb, I’ve got it.”

“Hah. Green,” you said, and he choked a little on his pancake.

* * *

She’d been growing progressively more anxious at his sudden silence, he’d noticed. She could, at times, be glaringly unsubtle with her emotions, practically putting them on broadcast for anyone with the smallest shred of intuitive talent. Loki was sitting in the common room the morning she returned from her breakfast outing with Doctor Banner, and he could practically feel her mood sour the instant she caught his eye. He looked back down to the novel he was reading over breakfast, betraying none of the smugness he was feeling in his body language. 

The last four days had been something of a test. Four days of quiet observation and thoughtful contemplation, four days of projecting complete indifference, four days of considering all of the ways he could play her like a flute if he just put in a little effort.

He was back on his feet, feeling fully in control for the first time since he’d been arrested.

She didn’t speak to him as she fetched two water bottles from the refrigerator, and Doctor Banner stood by the elevator, obviously forcing his posture to seem casual, unbothered. He cleared his throat uncomfortably, and they were back in the elevator before Loki could even blink twice.

His initial arrival at the tower had left him pessimistic; none of the original Avengers seemed to be simultaneously influential enough to get him free and easily manipulated, but she, on the other hand, was the perfect storm of entertaining, competent, and vulnerable. She was an out, one that he could use if he played his cards right. The part that made all of this so easy was that she was unafraid of him, fearless, it seemed, not adverse to snapping in his face when he treated her poorly, yet also sentimental and foolish, as she had felt poorly enough about it to apologize. Trusting was what she was, and that was exactly what he needed. For gods’ sakes, she’d spilled her guts at his feet at even the slightest offer of friendship, so the possibilities seemed endless as to what she’d be willing to do if he escalated the act.

He decided, after some deliberation, that he’d begin talking to her again tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hoo boy is loki doin a dumb thing. come on bro 
> 
> also, clint is a fun background character to me. I love him


	9. The Antagonist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They get an assignment, and it looks like it's going to be a doozy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI IT'S ME
> 
> so I've written......so much of this fic. So. Much. Just not in order like a reasonable person would do. Right now, the setting is still Fall of 2012, but I'm chipping away at events as near as March 2013 and as far as Thor: Ragnarok. It's a whole ass ride, I swear, and I'm hopin that it'll be worth it!
> 
> Side note, but this fic is currently 45 pages long. I've finished a single chapter set in March 2013 that ended up 18 pages long. It's a lot, guys, brace yourselves!!!

Mr. Stark had a new job for you, and it was about time, if you said so yourself. You sat in a chair opposite his desk, fingers drumming on the pamphlet in your lap. 

Tony had left it taped to your door, and you’d found it as you were on your way to bed after a long days’ work the day before. 

The cover was misleading, all glossy and colorfully printed, advertising with a phrase so chilling and cultish you weren’t sure what to expect. You had turned it over in your hand a few times, curious, and ran your fingertips over the words, reading them in a hushed voice: “Divine Intervention.”

_With the existence of the Nordic deities confirmed by the presence of Thor and Loki upon our Earth, it is logical to presume that those worshiped by other ancient civilizations also walk among us even in the modern age. The gods and goddesses of the Greek, Egyptian, and Indian “mythologies”, for instance, were all described as beings capable of wielding remarkable powers that mortals can only begin to imagine, and that they would sometimes use these powers for the good of the humans they watched over. As the ages passed, these beings faded from popular belief, and humans turned to each other and themselves for things such as protection and guidance._

_However, with new evidence of superhuman entities and their activities surfacing across the globe every day, it is no longer reasonable for the human race to persist in our denial of divinity in its many forms. Our purpose as an organization is to find these gods and demand that they reclaim their responsibility as our protectors and caretakers. Their abilities come with an inherent obligation to help those who are less fortunate; the state of our world, with its rampant poverty and homelessness, famine, disease, and countless tragedies, is in desperate need of help, and the gods and goddesses are clearly not doing the jobs they were born to do. We believe that they should cease this useless practice of hiding in the shadows and, instead, follow in the steps of The Mighty Avengers to protect our world._

You had read and reread the pamphlet, buzzing with morbid curiosity, and, needless to say, your interest was piqued. You looked up at Mr. Stark, focusing on Loki in your peripheral vision to try and gauge his reactions. He was cool, as usual, legs and arms crossed in a bad imitation of a disinterested teenager.

“If you’ve both done your homework on this, you’ve probably guessed by now why I’m sending you to Indiana for a couple days next week.” You nodded, trying to dial back your excitement as much as you could. “So, from what I understand, this group has existed loosely for over thirty years, but they’re just now getting their fifteen minutes of fame thanks to Frosty here and his brother.” Loki rolled his eyes. You couldn’t see it, but you knew that he had to be rolling his eyes. “They’re part-time cult, part-time activist group, and full-time Avengers fanatics, now that superheroing is mainstream. Kinda religious hipsters, liked paganism before it was cool, and all that. Their founders were hippie peace enthusiasts, one with nature, did a lotta marijuana back in the day, yadda yadda, but to keep up with the times, the organization took a shower, got a job, and moved past its hippie phase and out of its mom’s basement in the mid nineties. Recently, they’ve gotten media attention cause of a few...not-so-hippie protests.”

“So what’s our job?” you asked, shifting a little in your seat.

“Well, they’re on our radar now, but we need to check in and see if they pose any actual threat to me, and my fellow superhumans.” He winked at you, and you snorted. You could almost hear Loki rolling his eyes, but he didn’t move an inch. “So. You two are going undercover to their upcoming convention as a pair of mythology enthusiasts from California. Who better than Milo Thatch and an actual Norse god?”

You brightened up. “Oh, like from _Atlantis_! I can’t believe I have a nickname,” you joked, a little too chirpy, elated at the notion that you’d be able to put your knowledge to good use on the job. Also, that had been the only movie you’d ever convinced your father to take you to, and he’d liked it so much that it had become a tradition to watch it at least once a year, so the nickname was flattering.

“It was that or Indiana Jones, and I don’t think you can match the roguish charm of Harrison Ford.” You made an exaggerated noise to let him know that you’d taken serious offense to that statement. “Hey, prove me wrong and I’ll change your nickname accordingly. Anyway, I got two VIP tickets and a hotel room booked for that weekend. You’re there to work, though, so don’t get too distracted by the...activities. They list group events on the website, and it’s a pagan festival, so they’re probably all code for orgies.”

“I don’t think they’re code for orgies,” you said.

Stark’s eyes glittered with amusement. “Kidding. Obviously. If I thought there were orgies, I’d be going instead.”

You nodded, a smile twitching at your lips.

“It’s mostly speakers, booths, and a few people selling stuff, according to the itinerary. More conference, less comicon, so you might want to…” he glanced at your current outfit. “...dress up. Business casual.”

Loki’s gaze flicked over you at that, and a memory the comment he had once made about your wardrobe made your brow twitch. You were embarrassed, but hid it well, and nodded in agreement while trying to fight down the heat in your cheeks.

“Now, you’ll be undercover, but don’t sweat it too much. It’s nothing like the stuff you see in movies, because you’re newbies, and I won’t be putting you out in the real shit for a while yet.”

“I, for one, am _intimately_ familiar with the intricacies of undercover work,” Loki said, sounding a dangerous sort of amused.

“Fine, then. I’m not putting Agent Hamilton in the real shit yet because she’s new to it, and I’m not putting _you_ out there because you aren’t trustworthy.”

You snorted.

“I’ve got you a pair of fake IDs and a backstory to boot.” Stark slid an envelope across the table to you, and you opened it to find exactly what he’d described.

“Maya Thatch...er. At least you added the ‘er’.”

“Otherwise I’d have risked being obvious,” Stark said, oozing sarcasm.

“Here you go, Mr. Henry Thatcher,” you said, handing Loki his ID. He took it gingerly.

“You’ve gotten my height wrong,” he told Stark.

“Tragic,” Stark replied.

“So, if anyone asks, we met while we were both studying abroad in Greece?” you asked, skimming the paper.

“It’s in your file that you know some conversational Greek.” He paused to look at you in silent question, and, to answer, you butchered the Greek word for ‘a little’ with the brutality of the meat cutter at your local deli, accidentally revealing that, in actuality, you were terrible at what little Greek you knew; Stark, who knew _no_ Greek, took this as confirmation. ”So I thought you could throw together a realistic story if you’re put on the spot. You know, something like, you spotted those greasy raven locks from across a crowded room and the rest was history, and _you_ discovered some ineffable quality of hers that you had no choice but to fall for, all that mushy bullshit. You’re both decent actors, I’m sure you’ll make that shit either so believable or so uncomfortable to think about that you’ll pass the couples’ test with flying colors.”

You shifted in your seat, wrinkling your nose. _You_ were certainly uncomfortable. Loki wasn’t looking at you, instead regarding Stark, but somehow his unflinching demeanor seemed to be a statement in and of itself and you couldn’t help but think that maybe you should be taking offense. “And we own a bookstore? Really? Who owns a bookstore in _this_ economy?” you joked.

“Fictional mythology nerds.”

“I...yeah. Okay.”

Loki didn’t spare you so much as a glance on his way out, and you supposed that this was how the whole trip would be.

* * *

He was in the kitchen when you came up from training, and you got the sense that he’d been waiting for you, no matter how nonchalant his posture was trying to be. His surprise looked genuine when he heard you exit the elevator, and you almost stumbled under the weight of his gaze on your way to the fridge.

“Agent Hamilton,” he said.

“Loki,” you replied, curt.

“I’d really like to apologize for my”--your eyes almost bugged right out of your head, and you hid it behind the refrigerator door, grabbing one of Clint’s nasty gatorades instead of the water bottle you were going for--”ah, _coldness_ , over the last few days. It’s just that”--oh well, you’d made your bed, and now you had to, uh, drink it, so you took a swig from the bottle and--”you were right.”

It would’ve very nearly been the spit take of the century if you hadn’t managed to eject most of it right out your nostrils. God, it _burned!_

This was not the reaction he’d been hoping for. He cleared his throat in a polite effort to cover a laugh as you spluttered, tears flowing down your cheeks with far more drama than the situation called for.

“Well--” You interrupted him with another fit of coughs. “I suppose I was just trying to--” You braced yourself on the counter and clutched at your chest. “Should I _call_ someone?” he asked. You shook your head, holding up a finger to let him know you’d only be a moment.

You scraped together what little dignity you had left and righted yourself, rubbing your nose with as much subtlety as you could manage. “Continue,” you wheezed.

“You said that my mother must have trusted me to have shared her magic as she had, and it hit rather close to home, because you’re correct. I’ve...let her down.”

“Oh,” you said. 

“And I realized that...that I don’t want to do that anymore. I’d like to make an effort, and I’m humbly requesting your assistance.”

“Oh,” you said again, blinking the Gatorade-induced tears from your eyes. So much for hydration.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fake undercover spouses???? In MY MCU fanfiction????????

**Author's Note:**

> I really appreciate that you took the time to read and I hope you enjoyed!!


End file.
